Last M51 for this season

[Budgie1]

This season is rapidly drawing to a close. It was clear last night so I got setup but it was gone 23:00 before it was dark enough to start imaging so I chose M51 as a nice easy target because I didn't know how long I would have before the clouds were due back.

As it turned out I got just over 2 hours of clear skies, I continued imaging until 03:00 but didn't use the last 20 images due to high cloud. All the same, seeing was very good before that and new HEQ5 was guiding well, now I've taken the slack out of the drive gears.

Anyway, this is the result of 2hrs 8 mins of 2 minute subs, with darks, flat & dark-flats. Take with Evostar 100ED DS Pro with 0.85 reducer/flattener on HEQ5, using ASI294MC Pro at 120 gain and cooled to -10°C. Guiding with PHD2 using an ASI120MM Mini on a SVbony 60mm guide scope. Captured with APT, stacked in DSS and processed in PI. It's cropped from the full image, so the detail could have been better defined, but I'm happy with the detail it's produced.

C&C's welcome and hope you enjoy another M51.

 

[Budgie1]

As a wee comparison, I imaged M51 on the 17th Sept 2020, a couple of months after I started back into astrophotogaphy following a 5 year break. The learning curve has been steep but enjoyable, rewarding and when you look how far you've come in less that a year it makes you want more.

 This was what I got on that visit with the same scope but with an unmodded Canon EOS 2000D on an EQ5 mount. I did reprocess this when I bought PI and I found more detail than I got from PS CS3, so this is the PI version.

[peter shah]

A great rendition and a massive difference from September

[AstroAndy]

Very detailed, good capture, I can even discern the blue in the spiral arms of IC 4263 (the little galaxy towards the left bottom). You might say IC 4263 in blue.

[Budgie1]

Thanks Andy & Peter.

Yes the seeing was very good that night and being a Bortle 2 area helps enormously and I could see there was good detail in the sub on APT as they were being downloaded. It was only the second outing for the HEQ5, so I'm still getting used to it and honing the guiding with it, so improvements to be had still.

I wish I could have got a the arms of M51 a bit sharper but when I tried it made it blotchy around the dust tails, so I left it as is. I may have another got a it over the summer, when it's too light to do any imaging up here.

[tomato]

Great M51, I never tire of looking at images of this wonderful galaxy. I too can usually tell how good the final image is going to be by looking at the first few subs. Of course in the UK conditions can and usually do, adversely change during the course of a single night.

[Budgie1]

12 minutes ago, tomato said:

Great M51, I never tire of looking at images of this wonderful galaxy. I too can usually tell how good the final image is going to be by looking at the first few subs. Of course in the UK conditions can and usually do, adversely change during the course of a single night.

Me neither and this is overhead at the moment so handy when you have tall trees around you.

This is the difference I got between the 5th sub of the evening and one 3 hours later as the high cloud came over. Seeing was still good enough for PHD2 to keep guiding but I didn't put these into the stack, although I may pick out the best of them and re-stack to see if I can get more detail without the clouds effecting the image.

[tomato]

After analysis of the quality of the subs in APP there is always a spread, but there always 2 or 3 which are well below par, usually trailed due to scope sag or cloud coming across during the exposure. I discard these but generally stack all the remaining subs unless I have the luxury of 3+ hours of exposures on that channel which needless to say is vary rare.

[Budgie1]

I stacked the cloudy ones in with the others and re-processed the results. I'm not sure if they bring anything extra to the party or whether it was just my processing work flow.

IC more colour from 4263 though!