M101 in widefield - Pixinsight and long exposure experiments (Ian Dixon)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 101 · NGC 5422 · NGC 5443 · NGC 5449 · NGC 5450 · NGC 5451 · NGC 5453 · NGC 5455 · NGC 5457 · NGC 5461 · NGC 5462 · NGC 5471 · NGC 5473 · NGC 5474 · NGC 5475 · NGC 5477 · NGC 5484 · NGC 5485 · NGC 5486 · Pinwheel galaxy

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M101 in widefield - Pixinsight and long exposure experiments

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M101 in widefield - Pixinsight and long exposure experiments

A couple of experiments in this image - this made for a large learning curve.

FIrst though, I have to say how much I enjoy imaging galaxies, like M101. Many details can be seen in the arms of this big fellow, and lots of cool outlying galaxies can be found as well, including NGC 5422. Its tiny, but its really interesting and part of the FOV.

The first experiment was to try using 600s subs, not my best idea, as we had high winds last night. When I arrived it was calm, but it began gusting to 60 km/h, crazy! Guiding was still OK - doubling my error to 1.2 RMS, but I was shooting into the light bounce of the city and had to deal with some big gradients.

Subsequently my histogram looks like it was pulled through a knothole backwards. 😂

The second experiment was to manually stack and calibrate in Pixinsight. I ran into difficulties calibrating my lights... and I still can't figure out why. 😱

Other functions in Pixinsight are amazing, including the colorimetric calibration of stars.

This image took me about 400% more time than usual, as I get my feet wet in the new software. 🙂

Original
B
Final
C

B

Description: Accessory:

Black Tea, Yorkshire (several cups per session)

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: My attempt at removing horizontal banding with PI.

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3865170
PixInsight job	G736FTOXUDXNJK03KIYFY1CAG9Q51GE8
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	14h03m15s.70
RA (top/left)	14h11m48s.56
RA (top/right)	14h11m53s.88
RA (bottom/right)	13h53m54s.89
RA (bottom/left)	13h55m21s.32

Dec (center)	+54°15′39″.9
Dec (top/left)	+52°28′26″.5
Dec (top/right)	+56°04′54″.7
Dec (bottom/right)	+56°00′38″.3
Dec (bottom/left)	+52°24′16″.5

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M101 in widefield - Pixinsight and long exposure experiments

M101 in widefield - Pixinsight and long exposure experiments

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M101 in widefield - Pixinsight and long exposure experiments

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