Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn)  ·  Contains:  IC 4263  ·  IC 4278  ·  M 51  ·  NGC 5169  ·  NGC 5173  ·  NGC 5194  ·  NGC 5195  ·  NGC 5198  ·  Whirlpool galaxy
Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) - RASA 11", Dan Gallo
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Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) - RASA 11"

Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) - RASA 11", Dan Gallo
Powered byPixInsight

Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) - RASA 11"

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

First light with my new RASA 11". Really impressed with it so far, and how well it seemed to hold focus through the imaging session, and smaller/sharper stars versus the HyperStar setup I had before. Some slight diffraction spikes, due to not properly routing the cables. Certainly a big and heavy scope to lift on to the mount (I have to setup each time!)

I had quite an obvious blue gradient on the lower left corner which DBE in PixInsight couldn't fix easily (think I need to work on my flats), so I just used Lightroom to apply a graduated filter to lower the black level and saturation on that corner of the image, which helped.

I like how I managed to capture some smaller (more distant) galaxies in the lower right corner of this image.

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Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) - RASA 11", Dan Gallo