I wanted to repeat an image of the Pinwheel this spring with my 6" SX152 at f/8 and see how much more detail I could gather with this scope over my 12" LX200. It was also the subject of the monthly imaging contest over at Cloudy Nights.
Most of the data including all of the RGB was collected prior to the appearance of the supernova (SN2023ixf). I had all night Lum and Ha sessions the night prior to detection and the night after detection. This data was used to narrow the time window by Dr Keming Zang over at Berkley. Here is the link:
SN2023ixfThe data was preprocessed using WBPP with PSF signal weighting with a high rejection rate to improve overall image sharpness due to variable seeing conditions. With around 65 hours of total data I had plenty to spare.
I did not have any color data of the supernova except the Ha. So I employed a simple mask over that area and altered the color to something more realistic than the red/pink that the Ha data initially made it. I understand the spectrum is blue so that is what I changed it to. This object is still very dim as it only includes data taken hours after its appearance and prior to the discovery.
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