M51 in a Full Moon

[Clarkey]

Despite my head saying 'forget it', with 3 nights of clear skies forecast I felt I had to image something. Narrowband would have been a better option, but due to available targets from my garden I decided to have a crack at M51.

In total I managed 17.5 hours integration, unfortunately a large proportion of this was in the blue channel as I put the wrong filter in my sequence. In addition, on the first night I got my gain setting wrong on the calibration frames and the following night the mirrors were covered in dew by the morning. I ended up having to use one set of calibration frames for all 3 nights. I guess the usual frustrations of AP🤬.

Anyway, given all the challenges I am quite pleased with the result. (I know the collimation is out on the RC8 but as yet I have not been brave enough to try an re-align in).

Any feedback welcome - especially with regards to the processing as I still have a lot to learn. Thanks for looking.

68 x 3min Lum

59 x 3min R and G

117 x 3min B

30 x 5min Ha

Processed in APP and Affinity

 

Edited March 3, 2021 by Clarkey
Wrong picture file

[PeterCPC]

Link will not open. Just post your jpg image.

[Cozzy]

Nice image given the issues you had.

What camera did you use?

[Clarkey]

10 minutes ago, Cozzy said:

Nice image given the issues you had.

What camera did you use?

Thanks for the comment.

This was taken using the ASI1600 mono.

[shropshire lad]

Good job done .

 

[Clarkey]

Slightly better version - slightly better processing (I think).

[Luke Newbould]

Nice job and a tremendous effort

[Clarkey]

Thanks. Appreciated.

[Greg H]

Very nice, goes to show you can get some good broad band deep sky images during a full moon.

I was imaging the same object at the same time with the same camera. I only manged 4h total integration time and my results are not quite as good as yours.

[Jannis]

Very nice capture of M51 during a full moon!

I like your first version better as it have better (in my eyes) colors and contrast, but they're both nice