Here we have my crack at M51 for this spring/summer.  Probably not the right time to be doing this but it was done as somewhat of an experiment at the conclusion of Galaxy Season.

I think I have learned a lot about imaging these last months and for me, and among the things I think I've learned is quite a bit about sampling, in the practical sense.  Not difficult for me to understand in the theoretical sense but conditions vary night to night and from location to location so some actual hands on stuff really was very helpful to me.

To make a long story short(er) I had purchased a camera at the beginning of the season, the veTec 432m which has very large pixels at 9um.  I was thinking that was very important to imaging at longer focal lengths.  I made a number of images using this camera, some I posted, some I did not.  But was never happy with my results with the camera.  

I decided to try using an ASI183mm binned 2x2 yielding 4.8um pixels and see how these images might compare.  Clearly, that was much, much better.  Sure, I did not get that much of a noise reduction as one might with a CCD camera but the binning worked perfectly, I think, in terms of sampling.

However I still have this veTec 432 camera and I began thinking about doing an image employing drizzling to see how a drizzled 2x image which would be similar to 4.5um pixels might compare to the results I got with the ZWO ASI183mm binned 2x2.  

So this is what this project represents.  The original is a little more than 4 hours of integration with the veTEC 432 drizzled and the final image is about  5-1/2 hours of integration with the 183mm binned 2x2.  

I did have some trouble doing the drizzle integration in Pixinsight as evidenced by a repeated pattern of some kind of artifact that can be seen especially in the lower left hand corner of the original.  The drizzled image from DSS was similar but without the artifacts.

Both of these images were processed in similar fashion with deconvolution, linear noise reduction and some additional NR and local histogram equalization in the non-linear state.  

Seems to me, the ASI183mm image is superior but I was somewhat encouraged by the work produced with the veTEC camera.  I think a little lower gain might do the trick but the big thing may be that I can take advantage of the greater sensitivity of the large pixels and then regain some resolution via drizzling.  To be continued next Galaxy Season!

Any comments on the foregoing would be appreciated if so inclined.

This could, as so many images, benefit from about double the integration time but not to be.  I have run out of time to finish this in HaLRGB as I had intended but I thought it was nice enough as a monochrome image to post.

I hope you like it and as always, comments and criticism are welcome...  CS and good health.