The Whirlpool Galaxy is easy to find with the Telrad from the end of the Dipper. It helps that it is bright and NGC 5195 is nearby and almost as bright. I had a few wind gusts, but mostly very good conditions tonight. CCD was around 0 °C through the run. 300 s subframes were no problem as M51 was away from the light domes tonight. This has to be one of my all-time favorite deep sky objects. I had a lot of trouble getting any color to show, so I probably pushed the saturation a bit too much.
Reprocessed in the revision using what I've learned in the last couple of months about setting white balance using the star average, and using the improved Color module in StarTools.
Date: 15 Feb 2013
Subject: M51, Whirlpool Galaxy
Scope: AT8IN
Filter: None
Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)
Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.0
Camera: DSI IIc (no chiller, T = 0 °C)
Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.2, no dither
Exposure: 31x300 s
Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.
Processing: StarTools 1.3 Color balance, Wipe, Develop, Contrast, HDR
ptimize, Sharp, Deconvolute, Track, Magic:Shrink (twice), Filter:Reject (for red haze), Life:Moderate+Saturate. CS6 Astronomy Tools increase star color, AstroFrame.
Comments