First Image of 2019 - M81 and M82

[CKemu]

 

It's been months of rain and clouds down here in Cornwall, so I can honestly say I started feeling a little rusty by the time I remembered in which order to do things whilst setting up! Set up the scope and whilst a nearby street light is a bane, I decided to go for long exposure shots in wide-band RGB and picked two galaxies I've imaged before, but separately through a much longer FL telescope (Meade LX90 8").

With the Esprit 100ED and the same camera (ATIK414ex), I can "just" get them both in shot, along with some interesting background fuzzies, who's distance fascinates me, and I plan to research.

This image is really no where near complete in terms of data, I manged:

R 17x600s
G 12x600s
B 18x600s

Guiding came out nice with an RMS of 0.45", so glad I discovered drift aligning through PHD2 those few years back. Want to get the data sets over 30x600s per channel, and then do a run of 20 or so H-alpha exposures in the 1200s range to pull out the star forming regions in M81 and capture the full extent of the starburst in M82, which showed up nicely in my 2017 photo with the LX90 8".

Hoping we all get some excellent clear skies this ear.

[iwols]

great images there ,is the top one with your esprit 100 and atik 414 please,ive got the 414 and im using it with an sw ed80 ,but ready to press the button on the esprit 100,do you have any comments on that set up that may swing me cheers?

[CKemu]

1 hour ago, iwols said:

great images there ,is the top one with your esprit 100 and atik 414 please,ive got the 414 and im using it with an sw ed80 ,but ready to press the button on the esprit 100,do you have any comments on that set up that may swing me cheers?

Thank you, yeah the top image is taken with the Esprit 100 and 414EX combination. I've had the Esprit only for a relatively short period, but finding it fantastic, it's got great construction, well packaged and has performed really well with everything I've thrown at it so far.

I went from the LX90 8" SCT as my main scope, to this being my deep sky set up, wider field of view, handles stronger wind conditions with excellent focus control by comparison, the LX90 I shall use for planetary nebulae and lunar/planets now. So for me the change was fairly dramatic, not sure what you'd experience/expect going from the 80 to the 100.

Would be interested to see what you get out of it, not spoken to anyone with an identical setup yet.

[Sunshine]

Amazing!

[barkis]

Stunning work CK, You've got off to a great start early in 2019.
You really brought out the Starburst in the lower image of M82, but these pair make a great sight don't they.