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M81, Bode's Galaxy, 3 Jan 2013, David Dearden

M81, Bode's Galaxy, 3 Jan 2013

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

M81 was pretty easy to find tonight; I could see it in the guide camera easily at 1.5 s exposures. I chose M81 because the moon will rise shortly and I wanted a fairly bright target. It is very cold (CCD at -14 °C with no chiller) and I had to de-frost everything prior to beginning this session; likely it will frost up again. Guiding is the best I have ever seen so far, but I'm going to bed.

In this revision I have applied the things I've learned in the last 4 months about bringing out color (primarily white balancing using the star average and bringing up the saturation without bringing it all the way up at the low end).

Date: 3 Jan 2013

Subject: M81, Bode’s Galaxy

Scope: AT8IN+High Point Scientific coma corrector spaced properly

Filter: None

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.0

Camera: DSI IIc (no chiller, T = -14 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.2, no dither

Exposure: 34 x 300 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.

Processing: Neb 3 crop and auto color. StarTools 1.3 Wipe, Develop, HDR:Mod (1 layer), HDR:Core reveal (other layer), Sharp, Deconvolute (2.5), Track, Magic:Shrink, Life:Moderate. CS6 Astronomy Tools Increase Star Color,Overlay Moderate and Core Reveal layers with Gaussian blurred layer mask, copy layer and use levels to darken background with another layer mask, AstroFrame.

Comments

Revisions

  • Final
    M81, Bode's Galaxy, 3 Jan 2013, David Dearden
    Original
  • M81, Bode's Galaxy, 3 Jan 2013, David Dearden
    B
  • M81, Bode's Galaxy, 3 Jan 2013, David Dearden
    C

Histogram

M81, Bode's Galaxy, 3 Jan 2013, David Dearden