Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn)  ·  Contains:  IC 4263  ·  IC 4278  ·  M 51  ·  NGC 5169  ·  NGC 5194  ·  NGC 5195  ·  NGC 5198  ·  Whirlpool galaxy
M51 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light, Ben Koltenbah
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M51 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light

M51 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light, Ben Koltenbah
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M51 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

This is the Whirlpool Galaxy M51 and vicinity taken with my new Takahashi FSQ-106EDX4, F5, 530mm FL. This is one of five galaxy wide FOV scenes I acquired over two nights. Overall I'm pleased with how this turned out, however I am concerned that stars are not round over the full FOV. This may be due to any number of reasons, hopefully not any flaw with the new scope itself.

I include a crop of the wider FOV to better compose M51 with two of its background neighbors. Given the small number of exposures, the results look fairly decent. I look forward to getting the scope out again at the next opportunity to spend more time on a single target.

Image D is an annotated version that I enjoyed preparing with PI. There is an astounding number of galaxies in the field, most of which are such tiny dots I assumed they were stars, but they are clearly marked with PGC designations.

Comments

Revisions

  • M51 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light, Ben Koltenbah
    Original
  • M51 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light, Ben Koltenbah
    B
  • M51 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light, Ben Koltenbah
    C
  • M51 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light, Ben Koltenbah
    D
  • Final
    M51 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light, Ben Koltenbah
    E

B

Description: Synthetic Luminance

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C

Description: Inverted Synthetic Luminance

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D

Description: Annotated Luminance

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E

Description: Cropped LRGB

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M51 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light, Ben Koltenbah

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