M51 & friends, unguided

[The Admiral]

A few nights ago I had another attempt at imaging with my new GEM45 mount. My target was the ubiquitous M51, and I have to say not the most successful of results. I found that I was getting a bit of star trailing with an exposure of 90s (could have been breeze induced I suppose), so I had to cut the exposure time down to 60s. Altogether a total of 90 minutes exposure. I've not been too discerning with processing as it didn't seem worth putting in extra effort. Needs a lot more data, and not as pleasing as my last attempt with M81/82.

What surprised me a little though was number of other surrounding objects thrown up by Astronomy.net. In particular, IC4285, a spiral galaxy about a billion LY away, and moving away with a speed of 7.4% of the speed of light! The mind boggles . I've arrowed it in the main image.

 

Ian

Edited April 29, 2020 by The Admiral

[Knight of Clear Skies]

A bit noisy as you say but still a fine image. I suspect a lot more could be done to clean up the background, have you tried 'isolate' in Startools or 'deep sky noise reduction' in Noel's actions? What scope was this taken with please?

1 hour ago, The Admiral said:

In particular, IC4285, a spiral galaxy about a billion LY away, and moving away with a speed of 7.4% of the speed of light!

Yes, it's fun to peek in the corners and see what you've caught.

[The Admiral]

Thanks Sir Clear-Skies. I guess that more could be done to refine the image, but given the lack of data I didn't feel like committing more time to it, especially as it's a long while since I've used StarTools, and with the new version I'm certainly not up to speed. I don't use Photoshop. I'll have a look at ST 'isolate', though it'd be nice to retain some of the tidal dust; I'm not sure how that would be effected.

Taken with Altair Wave 104 f/7 ED triplet scope, Photoline 0.79x reducer and Fuji X-T1 (effective FL 560mm). ISO1600. 90 x 60s lights, and 50 each of flat-darks, flats and bias.  Stacked in AstroArt 6, processed in StarTools, and finished in Lightroom. Mounted on iOptron GEM45.

Ian

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Thanks. If you felt like it sharing it, I'd be happy to have a quick go at processing it.

[The Admiral]

20 minutes ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Thanks. If you felt like it sharing it, I'd be happy to have a quick go at processing it.

Thanks. I'm on my laptop at the moment and I realize that I will have to start up my PC to get to the FITS. Will do that when I'm next on it if that's OK. But it also means that I must have used the earlier version of ST; the latest version should give better results anyway.

Cheers,

Ian

Edited April 29, 2020 by The Admiral

[The Admiral]

2 hours ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Thanks. If you felt like it sharing it, I'd be happy to have a quick go at processing it.

Link sent.