Messier 51 with Stellina from the City (Alex Woronow)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: IC 4263 · IC 4278 · M 51 · NGC 5194 · NGC 5195 · Whirlpool Galaxy

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Messier 51 with Stellina from the City

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Messier 51 with Stellina from the City

Messier 51 Stellina

Scope…………..Stellina: 80mm f/5 fully automated telescope
Observatory……La Cienaga Alta Observatory…Tucson, AZ (a.k.a., my backyard)
Camera………... Built-in CFA
Exposures………345 x 10" = 57.5'
Image Width…....43.5 arc-minutes
Processed by Alex Woronow (2022) using PixInsight, Topaz, SWT

Over the course of two nights, with the moon not yet at first quarter and twilight lingering, I recorded about 530 exposures of M 51. And, the lights of Tucson were on full display. Removing those subs that were captured too soon after sunset and a few that had been affected by a breeze, winnowed the best exposures down to about 1 hours’ worth.

Preprocessing the images in PixInsight (from the Fits subs) revealed a mottled colored background not much below the intensity level of the parts of the galaxy I wanted to show. I suppose that background arose from the rather mild air temperatures those two evenings, about 70F. The lack of sensor cooling probably exploited those temperatures to degrade the background darkness (as did Tucson lights)—cannot wait for the Tucson summer! In any case, rather than waiting until the moon stopped harassing M 51 so I could capture more images and suppress the noise better, I went into Studio2 and Denoise (Topaz products) to force out this image.

I am pleased with it, overall, given my relatively humble place on the Stellina learning curve! Hope you find it interesting to see what that little 3” scope can do under moderately difficult circumstances.

Vaonis Instruments (Images Obtained Using Vaonis Auto-Acquisition Scopes)

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5656748
PixInsight job	CKZP3L8LDTNHDG5WSYJOGPHFDNSDR3SR
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h29m55s.41
RA (top/left)	13h32m01s.36
RA (top/right)	13h27m46s.97
RA (bottom/right)	13h27m47s.85
RA (bottom/left)	13h32m05s.16

Dec (center)	+47°12′51″.7
Dec (top/left)	+46°55′05″.7
Dec (top/right)	+46°55′34″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	+47°30′28″.2
Dec (bottom/left)	+47°29′58″.2

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Messier 51 with Stellina from the City

Messier 51 with Stellina from the City

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Messier 51 with Stellina from the City

Messier 51 with Stellina from the City

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