M51 - Another Whirlpool...

[Hallingskies]

My take on an early summer favourite...

I used H-alpha as the red channel to highlight the star-forming regions along the galaxy's spiral lanes. I have to manually refocus upon changing filters (particularly when switching from H-alpha to the RGBs) and the beefy but rather crude rack and pinion focuser on the Vixen ED114 does give rise to a fair bit of image shift. On this occasion for some reason, Astroart's co-register function subsequently struggled to line the H-alpha channel up accurately with the luminance/green/blue ones, hence some funny haloes around the stars.

But after what surely must be a record four consecutive clear nights, sleep deprivation is starting to set in and so this one will do for now...

[Knighty2112]

Great image. Well done!  Like it a lot! 

[Hallingskies]

3 minutes ago, Knighty2112 said:

Great image. Well done!  Like it a lot! 

Cheers Gus.  Nice to get some dark-sky hours in after the virtual wipe-out of the previous two months...

[Sunshine]

stunning!

[MarsG76]

Excellent work.. M51 is something I'd love to image at 2000mm but unfortunately the earth is in the way.

 

[iansmith]

Good image. The skies do seem to be all or nothing at the moment.

Cheers, Ian