The seeing from my backyard observatory can best be described as sub-optimal.   I am in awe of many of the galaxy images posted here by my AB friends. Unfortunately they are sadly unobtainable for me.  At least, without outside help.  

I decided to see what I could achieve on one of the most beautiful galaxies in the Southern Hemisphere - M83 - by enlisting the help of Chilescopes 20inch Newtonian for the L-band data, and my own TS Hypergraph 8 for the RGB and Halpha data.   The plate scale in arcsec/px is almost identical on both telescopes, however the seeing in Chile os at least twice as good on average as my backyard.  So, while I had never tried the bin x 2 on RGB trick, I thought it was worth a shot.

By squeezing my 2.25 hours of L-band image on Chilescopes into the last part of the night, I was able to purchase some heavily discounted bright-of-moon time (even although the moon was down for the observations) and 36hours later I was able to get 6 hours on the target in HaRGB from my backyard.  The ratio of L to other bands was an equivalent of 5:1.  As predicted, the seeing on my scope was around 3-4pix, but on the Chilescope it was sub-2px, and so I got my first chance to drizzle.

However, heavy dew on my corrector (one fan, 1ary, 2ary heaters and dew strap around the corrector are still not enough!) rather spoiled the B data, and I discovered in processing that Ha needs to be taken at the same resolution as L...

Despite these slight hiccups, I am pretty happy with the final result The superbly detailed L-band data obtained from Chilescopes holds up, even my my rubbish seeing data in RGB laid on top.   Without great blue or Ha data, I had to fiddle with the saturation a little to get a more interesting image.  But I do like the way the young, hot blue star delineate the leading edge of the spiral arms, due to the density wave.  Also the R-band data does a good job with picking out the star-forming regions, even without the Halpha data, which can sometime overwhelm images of this object.  

 I am not sure if the image would have been appreciably better had I taken the full LRGB dataset at Chilescopes, but my wallet certainly thanks for not doing so.  When the weather clears again, I plan to get better B data and get rid of those annoying faint halos around some of the stars. 


L: 27 x 300sec 500mm Newtonian (Chilescopes}
R/G/B: 18 x 300 200mm TS Hypergraph 200mm