M81 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light (Ben Koltenbah)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: Bode's galaxy · Bode's nebulae · Cigar galaxy · M 81 · M 82 · NGC 3031 · NGC 3034 · NGC 3077

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M81 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light

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M81 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light

This is M81 and Vicinity, my third "first light" image using my new Takahashi FSQ-106EDX4. As I described in my two previous images, I chose to shoot five separate targets over two nights rather than to concentrate on just one scene. I'm calling this my Messier Mini-Meander. (Will I ever tire of that joke?)

One of the issues that I've had with imaging M81, particularly in tandem with M82, is how best to capture its dynamic range. Its core is quite bright, whereas the delicate wispy arms are quite dim in comparison, not unlike the Andromeda Galaxy, M31. Meanwhile its close companion (top of my image) M82 is comparatively quite bright throughout, and on it I wish to better show its dynamic range with dust lanes throughout the middle. These are best imaged in Ha, but I did not shoot that channel this first time out. To my eye this image appears to have the two brighter galaxies washed out, although I notice the effect is not quite so severe when viewing the cropped image

Anyway, following my goal of these five images, I've come up with five wide FOV scenes conducive for interesting annotation. I hope you are enjoying these, and next time out with this scope I promise to settle on one or two targets only so that I can get more integration time and detail. Although I'm pleased with what detail I could get here for such little time, particularly on the color channels.

Original
B
C
D
Final
E

B

Description: Luminance

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C

Description: Inverted Luminance

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D

Description: Annotated Luminance

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E

Description: LRGB Crop

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	1985304
PixInsight job	57YW47LCAB3F5TSJX9Z4OSAEFNDQ71D6
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	09h56m40s.30
RA (top/left)	10h04m31s.24
RA (top/right)	09h48m14s.68
RA (bottom/right)	09h49m15s.100
RA (bottom/left)	10h04m38s.69

Dec (center)	+69°13′16″.10
Dec (top/left)	+69°51′30″.8
Dec (top/right)	+69°47′57″.1
Dec (bottom/right)	+68°33′47″.3
Dec (bottom/left)	+68°37′09″.0

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M81 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light

M81 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light

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M81 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light

M81 & Vicinity LRGB Wide FOV - First Light

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