M101 The Pinwheel Galaxy (Michael Feigenbaum)

M101 The Pinwheel Galaxy

Here we have a stab at M101 The Pinwheel Galaxy, a subject very familiar to all of us I would think. This nearly face-on galaxy lies approximately 21 million light years away in Ursa Major. The galaxy contains about 1 trillion stars and is about 170,000 light years in diameter making it quite a bit larger than the Milky Way.

I have always wanted to image this galaxy and I have tried a couple of times with poor results. Mainly because I didn't know quite what I was doing. I have finished doing galaxies with an SCT and I'm trying to get a refractor tuned up for the summer subjects.

So I decided to do this one yet again in hopes I could do a little better than my past attempts. I'm fairly pleased with the outcome although there are some minor glitches to work out. I played with it a lot in post processing, mainly with regard to Ha integration. In my very humble opinion, and I think a lot of this is a matter of personal taste, I think a lighter touch with the integration of Ha is a good thing. The bulk of the revisions I made on this prior to posting it was simply experimentation with the level of Ha in the final image.

Another difficulty I had was that I shot the RGB using a color camera and replaced that with a monochrome camera to do the Ha and L. It seems the sensors in the two cameras are not oriented in the same way in relation to the camera bodies with a 90 degree difference. So I did have to crop the image a bit more than I would have liked. Yet another lesson learned, I should have checked that before beginning to image with the second camera.

I think this was a nice choice for a farewell to galaxies and for a 81mm objective and 535mm of FL, I was impressed with the detail and once I fix a couple of things, might be ready for the summer stuff.

I hope you like it, and of course, comments/criticism always welcome.

CS and good health...

Final
Original
R
S

R

Description: A little more Ha saturation. Perhaps a little too purple...

Uploaded: ...

S

Description: Monochrome version

Uploaded: ...

The OSC Club (One Shot Camera)
Arizona Astrophotographers
AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum
Cloudy Nights

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4636470
PixInsight job	82ALH7KJ8BJQ757JP2DIDQKRLSVM0X7D
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	14h03m06s.30
RA (top/left)	14h04m47s.10
RA (top/right)	14h00m03s.28
RA (bottom/right)	14h01m27s.54
RA (bottom/left)	14h06m08s.00

Dec (center)	+54°20′50″.7
Dec (top/left)	+54°44′54″.4
Dec (top/right)	+54°29′58″.7
Dec (bottom/right)	+53°56′41″.8
Dec (bottom/left)	+54°11′25″.9

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):