My first RGB: M101 from my back garden

[pi_co100]

Like many here in the UK, after months and months of clouds, last weekend I finally had an opportunity to do some imaging.

It was one of those rare days - or rather one of those rare nights - in which everything worked as hoped; even the supermarket carpark large yellow lights' in front of my garden shut down at 11pm bringing down the number of street lamps shining directly into my garden only to three!

I have chosen as my first color attempt to a deep sky M101. Why? simply because since I took a test frame of this amazing galaxy I have been hooked! In the image there are also many little galaxies - I was not expecting to see so much from my light polluted back garden...

The image was taken with a Takahashi FC100 at f4.9 mounted on an Avalon M-Zero and a ZWO ASI1600 imaging camera with RGB filters.

Processed with Pixinsight.

Luminance 30x60 seconds

Red 20x60 seconds

Green 20x60 seconds

Blue 20x60 seconds

Comments and feedback are welcome.

Piero

 

[Ronclarke]

Well done, very pleasing image.. 

[Allinthehead]

That's a nice first rgb. 

[henry b]

It is clear from your image you are going to do very well! henry b.

[pi_co100]

Thank you all for your kind comments. I found these tutorials (http://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorials.html) incredibly useful.

Piero

[tomato]

That's a very nice shot. For a first RGB image IMHO it's outstanding, you have all the elements in place. 

[pi_co100]

Well, many thanks. I was very happy with the results. My interest in astrophotography started really last year when I travelled to the US to see and photograph the eclipse.

With these new cameras, it seems there is hope even if you live in the centre of a town.