M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy (James Hawks)

M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy

The Pinwheel Galaxy is a face-on spiral galaxy ~21 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The Pinwheel Galaxy is estimated to be approximately 170,000 light years in diameter which is about the same size as our Milky Way but the Pinwheel contains ~1 trillion stars which is anywhere from 2 to 10 times as many stars as the Milky Way (100 - 400 billion stars).

This unguided image was captured, in a Queen Creek (Arizona) Bortle 7 backyard, using a Celestron EdgeHD 11" telescope with a 0.7x focal reducer. The telescope is mounted on a 10Micron GM2000 HPS II mount. The camera is a ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro using a Astodon OSC UV-IR Cut filter and the IDAS NBZ for HA data. The image is comprised of 175, 120 second exposure length frames and 100 300 second exposure length frames. It was captured over 9 nights (4-24-2022 to 5-11-2022). The images were stacked/processed in Pixinsight and fine-tuning done in Photoshop.

Acquisition:
   Location: Queen Creek, AZ Bortle 7
   Dates: 2022-04-24 to 2022-05-11
   Lights (Dithered, Cooled 0°C, Gain 100):
       175 x 120s UV-IR
       100 x 300s NBZ
   Bias: 200
   Flats: 25

Hardware:
   Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC PRO
   Scope: Celestron EdgeHD 11"
   Focal Reducer: Celestron 0.7x
   Focuser: Prodigy Microfocuser
   Guide Camera: Unguided
   Guide Scope: Unguided
   Mount: GM2000 HPS II
   Filter: Astrodon OSC UV-IR Cut, IDAS NBZ

Software:
   SGP
   Pixinsight
   Photoshop

Processing:
   Repeated separately for UV-IR and NBZ
       Stacked in Pixinsight (WBPP, Separate RGB, SubframeSelector, ImageIntegration)
       Pixinsight (ChannelCombination, DCrop, ABE, EZSoftStretch, Curves, StarNet2)
   Extract HA from NBZ mix with Main RGB Image
   AstroFlat Pro in Photoshop
   Camera Raw Filter in Photoshop
   Color/Levels Adjustments

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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
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Mix of multiple sources
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Unknown

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5780116
PixInsight job	WKCIWM8ZZAQZ9R5WANF89QVY1J9D59YV
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	14h03m10s.606
RA (top/left)	14h01m42s.505
RA (top/right)	14h01m48s.992
RA (bottom/right)	14h04m37s.456
RA (bottom/left)	14h04m33s.285

Dec (center)	+54°23′31″.43
Dec (top/left)	+54°41′42″.40
Dec (top/right)	+54°04′46″.63
Dec (bottom/right)	+54°05′17″.25
Dec (bottom/left)	+54°42′11″.94

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