M63, Sunflower Galaxy, 3 Jun 2013 (David Dearden)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: M 63 · NGC 5055 · Sunflower Galaxy

M63, Sunflower Galaxy, 3 Jun 2013, David Dearden

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M63, Sunflower Galaxy, 3 Jun 2013

Found M63 easily by placing the Telrad between Cor Caroli and Alkaid at the end of the Dipper. I could easily see it in the finder at 1 s exposures. I'm running the chiller at 2.25 A (8 °C). I was much more careful balancing the scope tonight and it seems to be paying off in much better guiding than I got in my last session. The first hour of subs look great. I'm using 2x2 averaging for PHD noise reduction, rather than 3x3 median, which I usually use; I'm hoping to make the guiding more precise this way. This was one of those nights when most things I tried seemed to work. I did start getting gusty breezes after midnight that messed up a few subs, and my guide scope is still experiencing some flexure issues, but overall I was fairly happy with this image; it blows away what I got last year.

Date: 3 Jun 2013

Subject: M63, Sunflower Galaxy

Scope: AT8IN + HPS Coma Corrector

Filter: None

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.2

Camera: DSI IIc (chiller at ~2.25 A, T = 8 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.6, no dither

Exposure: 32x300 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.3 Crop; Wipe:Color & Brightness; Develop 95.16%; Contrast; HDR:Equalize; Sharpen; Deconvolute: 3.0 pix; Track; Color:Bottom 2.0, Top Full, Sat 603%; Magic:Shrink 1; Magic:Tighten 1; Repair:Warp; Select bright stars & Magic:Shrink 2; Life:Moderate. CS6+Astronomy Tools increase star color; deep space noise reduction; less crunchy more fuzzy using a layer mask; AstroFrame.

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Astrometry.net job	8508403
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