6.5 hrs exposure on M51 (Andy Wray)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: HD117815 · IC 4263 · IC 4277 · IC 4278 · M 51 · NGC 5194 · NGC 5195 · NGC 5198 · PGC 2286797 · PGC 2287260 · PGC 2287543 · PGC 2287732 · PGC 2289565 · PGC 2290538 · PGC 2291430 · PGC 2292105 · PGC 2293576 · PGC 2294282 · PGC 2294604 · PGC 2297248 · PGC 2297311 · PGC 2300341 · PGC 2301870 · PGC 2303602 · PGC 3096259 · PGC 3096260 · PGC 83995 · PGC 91291 · Whirlpool Galaxy

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6.5 hrs exposure on M51

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6.5 hrs exposure on M51

I tried to capture M51 and as many background galaxies as I could during a few hours each night at the peak of Summer in a suburban area. It's not easy when there are so few dark hours, so many of my subs were either during bright moonlight, when it wasn't very dark or when I had whispy cloud cover. I had to heavily post-process this to try and get rid of gradients and general sky glow, but reasonably happy with the result.

I had to let the stars bloat a bit I'm afraid, because I wanted those tiny background galaxies to show up. I haven't yet found a star reduction or star extraction routine that will protect those tiny galaxies. Also, my collimation, secondary mirror alignment and guiding were all slightly off, hence the slightly weird shape of the stars. Slowly, but surely I'm learning how to get this kit working properly and in future years I'm sure I will nail all of the aforementioned.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6051451
PixInsight job	FWXCE6C1RASJQJENRUWVC25ZXFCWJCUO
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h29m51s.48
RA (top/left)	13h33m10s.28
RA (top/right)	13h31m00s.21
RA (bottom/right)	13h26m29s.53
RA (bottom/left)	13h28m44s.47

Dec (center)	+47°13′00″.7
Dec (top/left)	+46°49′45″.6
Dec (top/right)	+47°52′29″.3
Dec (bottom/right)	+47°35′55″.0
Dec (bottom/left)	+46°33′32″.9

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6.5 hrs exposure on M51

6.5 hrs exposure on M51

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6.5 hrs exposure on M51

6.5 hrs exposure on M51

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