Yet another shot of the Messier 101 supernova - SN2023ixf! Oh Boy!
There are so many of these shots already out there; why shoot one more?
Do I think I can do better than what other people are doing? N
ope! In fact, I knew when shooting this that the image would be somewhat subpar.
Why?
During my last imaging session, I struggled to pick a target for my Askr FRA400 widefield platform. Galaxy season is a tough time for this scope. There are just not enough widefield targets during this time of the year! Since the scope was untasked, I thought, why not point it at M101 and see what I get?
So:
- A widefield scope shooting a galaxy - that's going to be a problem!
- I was only able to get 3 hours of integration - my last shot of M101 had 11 hours - that's going to be a problem
- I am shooting with some thin smoke from the Alberta Wildfires in the air - that IS a problem.
With all of this - my expectations were very low. So why shoot it at all?
- Supernovae are one the coolest events in our night sky - I wanted to capture an image of that - even a poor one!
- I saw this as an opportunity to dive into what supernovae were all about and describe that in my web write-up
- I have the twisted part of my personality that like the challenge of getting a better image out of compromised data
So I went for it.
I drizzle processed, then cropped like mad, and took advantage of BlurXTerminator and NoiseXTerninaor to help improve a dicey image.
Here is the crop I used ( the story behind the dark edge is covered I'm my web post):
The result is not wonderful, but it's not horrible either!
See the full story of this image and my summary of supernovae here:
https://cosgrovescosmos.com/projects/m101-sn2023xif
Thanks,
Pat
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