M82 - the Cigar Galaxy

The Dawn of "Collaborative Computational Astrophotography"...

Astrophotography is generally considered a solo hobby. One that requires an individual to learn all the complex aspects of data acquisition, image processing, and eventually presentation - not to mention how to work a telescope, get all the equipment needed etc.

One of the major rate-limiting steps in getting repeatable generally "fantastic" images requires gigantic amounts of "lights" data - images of the object in question, and then masterful processing and post-processing.

This past week I've taken to review some older images I've made over the last few years - like the Iris nebula (NGC 7023) and M82 - the Cigar Galaxy - to realize that due to time constraints from my job, the lousy skies in CT, and other factors, it might make sense to turn this into a team sport rather than an individual sport...

At the Westport Astronomical Society, we have 4 astrophotographers (Dana Weisbrot, Stuart Stakoff, Shannon Calvert) who routinely go out at night, many times alone to observe and image to get a sense just "how beautiful the universe" happens to be... (Ross D. Martin). Earlier this week I asked Stuart Stakoff to provide me some of his imaging data on the Iris. Yesterday I asked Shannon Calvert to provide some data on M82. The resultant images have more data than any one of us could obtain (or have obtained over many years) - and the results speak for themselves. Below is 5.1 hours on M82 - as processed by me. Imaging data is from Shannon Calvert's 115mm APO refractor and my 92mm refractor. Different cameras, different days, across 2 years to get to 5.1 hours of lights data.

Therefore, given all this additional manpower and computational cooperation, I've coined the phrase, "Collaborative Computational Astrophotography". I hope that others will see the "light" and want to contribute to major efforts like these to get truly spectacular results. In fact, the shot below of M82 is, at this very minute, being reprocessed by Shannon Calvert. I'm sure his PixInsight and photoshop skills will produce an even better image than the one below...

This is data from the following dates:

14-2021 - 60 light frames, 90s @ ISO 1600 (Nikon D750),

5-17-2021 - 51 Light Frames, 90s @ ISO 1600

5-18-2021 - 46 Light Frames, 90s @ 1600,

All frames are from the Westport Astronomical Society's Celestron 14" EdgeHD SCT telescope

Total Integration time:

90 min

76.5 min

69 min

________

235.5 min = ~ hours 3.925 hrs

(UPDATED IMAGE - took out the 3200 iso frames - they were adding too much noise to the processing)

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