M51 Norfolk skies

[Galactic Wanderer]

This was taken as part of my successful weekend trip to the dark skies of Norfolk. This was my first time taking my telescope out of London and the difference was astonishing compared to London - I could see M51 through the eyepiece!

I prefer the sharper grey one but I can see the other one has a lot more colour. Trying to balance these out is tricky!

Equiment: SW 150PDS, EQ3 PRO mount, Stock Canon EOS 60D multiple 45 second exposures to make 1/2 worth of data.

Any comments are widely appreciated!

Seb

[wimvb]

Looks good. Dark skies are a real joy, aren't they?

To get more out if this target, you'd need longer and many more subs.

You can try some noise reduction before stretching. What processing software do you use?

 

[Galactic Wanderer]

 

On 4/15/2017 at 19:44, wimvb said:

Dark skies are a real joy, aren't they?

 

 

They are!

On 4/15/2017 at 19:44, wimvb said:

What processing software do you use?

 

I managed to process this one in pixinsight before my trial ran out.  Now I will probably go back to startools. I never really got the hang of pixinsight - even thought I did manage to process some nice images in it.

Seb

[Jannis]

That's a nice capture there!

It appears your mount is unable to track properly at 45 sec, so i think if i were you i'd actually try to reduce the exposure time and increase the amount of frames. Increase the ISO up to ISO800 (Based on these measurements) in case you were using a lower ISO. Higher ISO then 800 won't help much in general for the 60D, even for faint targets. 

With shorter exposures you will get a sharper picture and most likely you will capture equally much, if not more of the faint stuff still (simply because if you expose for so long that a star have moved across 4 pixels, you will capture it equally well with 1/4 of the exposure time, just that then it will only cover 1 pixel. If you then take 4x of these 1/4 long exposures, you will capture the same amount of light as in the 4x longer exposure, but thw star will remain on just 1 pixel giving you much higher resolution). There are of course exceptions, but for a relatively bright object like M51 i would give it a try.

[Rodd]

I would back off on the stretch a bit--you are pushing the data a little too far to reveal some of the faint extensions around M51.  You don't quite have the data for that yet.  Reduce the stretch and you background will darken up nicely, and the spiral arms of M51 will stand out a bit more.  Great start!

Rodd