The Whirlpool Galaxy with New Camera

[Gerr]

I made the jump from DSLR (Canon 650D) to a dedicated OSC camera > Zwo Asi294 MC Pro.

We've had some good nights with moon not rising till 6am last week.  A good opportunity to try out my new purchase!

I matched the Asi294 with SW200P telescope on HEQ5 belt driven mount. I used an IDAS LPS-P3 light suppression filter to help in my Bortle 6 class back garden.

APT controlled the show with Zwo 120mm mini guide camera keeping total RMS error to less than 0.3.

This was one of my longest integration times at 5 hours (60x300secs subs - 1x1 binning) using default unity gain (120) and offset (30). The camera was cooled to -10deg.

Calibration frames included Darks, Flats and Dark Flats.

Stacked in DSS (RGGB matrix) and processed in Photoshop CS2.

I think this is an improvement of my DSLR version - also included below.

I hope you agree and am looking forward to imaging a lot more DSO's with this new camera.

Zwo Asi294 MC Pro

M51 Whirpool Galaxy:

Cropped Version:

DSLR version: