M101 - lighting the fuse (Tom Gray)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 101 · NGC 5447 · NGC 5449 · NGC 5450 · NGC 5451 · NGC 5453 · NGC 5455 · NGC 5457 · NGC 5461 · NGC 5462 · NGC 5471 · Pinwheel galaxy

M101 - lighting the fuse

Revision title: Totally reprocessed in Siril, Starnet and Astrosharp

M101 - lighting the fuse

Revision title: Totally reprocessed in Siril, Starnet and Astrosharp

After posting a recent image, I decided to redo this spectacular galaxy, with more integration, to try and capture some of the colour, 'to light the fuse' of this celestial 'pinwheel'. Situated 25m LY away from us, this face on spiral has a bright core, wrapped around by arms, containing over a trillion stars, nebulae and active blue star clouds.

I have tried to improve the backspacing with my f3.3 reducer, with a little improvement in star shapes at the periphery of the field (I have also used the Startools 'repair' tool to cosmetically improve these). Data were captured in APT, calibrated, aligned and stacked in Nebulosity, and post-processed in Startools, with a little further noise reduction using the GreyCStoration tool in Nebulosity.

I had some real problems producing good calibration frames for these data, with severe vignetting, which was very hard to completely remove. I may try different calibration frames, and stack with the data collected last week.

I've always loved 'pin- or Catherine wheels', fireworks which burn brightly, often colourfully, in a diminishing spiral - by contrast this relatively young galaxy is expanding and throwing off blue star streams.

Original
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C
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B

Title: Cropped and smoothed

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C

Title: Totally reprocessed in Siril, Starnet and Astrosharp

Description: Stack processed in Siril with background extraction, photometric colour calibration, Starnet star removal, astro-sharpening of the starless image, star recomposition with final color and noise reduction.

Uploaded: ...

D

Title: Annotated

Description: Annotated in Siril

Uploaded: ...

UK Astro-Imaging
The OSC Club (One Shot Camera)
Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) Imagers
Altair Astro 183 M/C Hypercams

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7968779
PixInsight job	YUPE4OYLBCLYVIMITORZO5P5U1XXQJN5
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	14h03m14s.94
RA (top/left)	14h01m25s.75
RA (top/right)	14h01m42s.33
RA (bottom/right)	14h05m04s.90
RA (bottom/left)	14h04m49s.92

Dec (center)	+54°20′27″.3
Dec (top/left)	+54°38′02″.3
Dec (top/right)	+54°01′07″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	+54°02′47″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	+54°39′47″.3

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M101 - lighting the fuse

Revision title: Totally reprocessed in Siril, Starnet and Astrosharp

M101 - lighting the fuse

Revision title: Totally reprocessed in Siril, Starnet and Astrosharp

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M101 - lighting the fuse

Revision title: Totally reprocessed in Siril, Starnet and Astrosharp

M101 - lighting the fuse

Revision title: Totally reprocessed in Siril, Starnet and Astrosharp

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