M101 - a moonlight serenade. (Tom Gray)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: HD122865 · M 101 · NGC 5447 · NGC 5449 · NGC 5450 · NGC 5451 · NGC 5453 · NGC 5455 · NGC 5457 · NGC 5461 · NGC 5462 · NGC 5471 · Pinwheel galaxy

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M101 - a moonlight serenade.

Revision title: Binned and cropped

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M101 - a moonlight serenade.

Revision title: Binned and cropped

Taken over two bright moonlit nights I managed 6 hours on this classic spiral galaxy in Ursa major. M101 lies approximately 21 million LY from earth and the 170,000 LY diameter disk glows with over a trillion stars.
A yellowish core of older stars gives way to rather ragged arms characterised by bright star clouds of younger blue stars and several bright HII nebulae - some of these have their own designations (see annotation).

Images were captured in Stellarmate OS (EKOS/Kstars) using my RPi4, using a range of guided exposures. The bright moonlight created a tricky background to process, tamed to some extent with background extraction in SiRIL and final processing in Startools.

As well as M101 a number of smaller galaxies are visible in the background. Unfortunately there was some camera rotation between nights, using manual plate solving, which resulted in cropping of the final image. I managed to keep the fine edge on lenticular galaxy, NGC 5422 in frame.

Great to get out again after weeks of poor weather - keep looking up and have a happy and peaceful Easter.

[Postscript - restacked 106 frames in ASTAP, processed in SIRIL, with final colour adjustment in Startools - I like the bluer star clouds, and improvement in detail in the faint outer arms]

B

Title: Reprocessed

Description: Restacked in ASTAP, processed in SIRIL with final color adjustment in Startools

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C

Title: Crop

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D

Title: Annotated (SIRIL)

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E

Title: Cropped with colour saturation

Description: Sharpened, with some HDR, and colour enhanced in Startools

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F

Title: Binned and cropped

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Altair Astro 183 M/C Hypercams
UK Astro-Imaging
Messier Objects
Low-Cost Astrophotography

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8537317
PixInsight job	0HRMRIF348GOLS8D5K3QCO8W9HO8BBHQ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	14h03m01s.79
RA (top/left)	14h00m59s.99
RA (top/right)	14h01m17s.92
RA (bottom/right)	14h05m02s.28
RA (bottom/left)	14h04m47s.38

Dec (center)	+54°21′06″.4
Dec (top/left)	+54°40′00″.4
Dec (top/right)	+54°00′01″.10
Dec (bottom/right)	+54°02′00″.5
Dec (bottom/left)	+54°42′00″.9

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M101 - a moonlight serenade.

Revision title: Binned and cropped

M101 - a moonlight serenade.

Revision title: Binned and cropped

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M101 - a moonlight serenade.

Revision title: Binned and cropped

M101 - a moonlight serenade.

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