M83 - The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy

[hjw]

I bought myself a Saxon 200DS (equivalent to the SW 200PDS) for Christmas and have been struggling ever since to get it to work properly. At the end two things made the crucial difference: I had to rotate the tube so that the camera points to the ground (on the side it twisted the tube slightly and one corner of the image was out of focus while the rest was fine) and I hadn't noticed that the guide scope was slightly out of focus which caused the guiding to be less then optimum (Silly mistake :().

Anyway, got things working now. We had 4 clear nights in a row, so here is last nights effort: M83

M83 is one of the brightest galaxies in the Southern sky. It's 15 Mly away and spans about 12 arcmin.

Equipment: Saxon 200DS on a SW HEQ5 with a Pentax K-30 unmodified camera, SW ST80 guide scope with a ASI120MC guide camera.

61 x 180sec light frames ISO 800 stacked with DSS and processed in Photoshop.

Clear skies

HJ

 

[nucdoc]

Very nice, I love the subtle colors

[Demonperformer]

Lovely image of a galaxy we never see this well from the UK. Thanks for sharing.

[Allinthehead]

I like that. Not seen it before.

[stevewanstall]

Lovely image. I never tire of seeing photos of galaxies!