I decided to do this project on a lark. Early in February 2023, I had a few hours of garbage time left at the end of each night while shooting Cone stuff in narrowband, and I had recently been told directly by a prominent YouTuber that shooting broadband from the city was "functionally a waste of time." I know that people like
@Chad Leader and
@Chuck's Astrophotography have done some fantastic work with broadband from the city, and I feel like I've gotten some decent results before. So I looked upon that admonishment as a challenge.
To complicate matters, shooting galaxies at a focal length of 360mm is not optimal, but M101 is large enough to produce a reasonable result. So I took a page from Chuck's book and started shooting 1-minute subs every time I got finished shooting in Monoceros. I tried to pay meticulous attention to focus to maximize what I could pull from the Z61. Twenty-seven-and-a-half acquisition hours later, this is the result.
Comments