M101 in HaLRGB
L: 5173x1 sec 18403x2 sec (total 11.6 h)
Ha: 120x60 sec
RGB: 990x30 sec
Equipment:
CEM70
Celestron C11
Starizona 6.3 reducer
Omegon OAG Deluxe
ASI 294MM (for the L and HA) and ASI 294MC (for RGB)
Total effective exposure 21.8h, but i threw away god knows how many subs
This is my only serious project for this galaxy season and the resulting of months of attempts, issues, swears, and tears
This is also my first serious astrophotography project since i started november last year
A bit of background: I wanted to try lucky imaging as it's the acquisition method that makes most sense to me if what you are aiming for is maximum detail
Integrating that many subs was really a challenge, had to buy 128GB of RAM and a 4TB PCIE 4.0 SSD (thankfully had already a 5950x 16 core that i use for work)
Despite that, integrating with Pixinsight that many subs is basically impossible given the RAM and disk requirements, but i was finally able to integrate the L channel after two full days of processing using DeepSkyStacker
Once the L channel came out i was really surprised - the level of detail was amazing but the background was VERY noisy, and of course despite the long total exposure, it failed to capture the faintest details of the outer arms (expected)
I probably threw away at least another 30h of exposure, maybe more, but i honestly think the end result is spectacular and way above what i was expecting to achieve - I searched back and forth but i couldn't find any image of M101 close to this level of detail with a consumer telescope, the closest that i could find was the Astrobin APOD which was taken with a C2PU (observatory grade 1M telescope) which is objectively much more detailed and this one
https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noao-m101ubviha/ taken at the Kitten Peak National observatory (4M telescope!)
Comments