Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  DR UMa  ·  IS UMa  ·  M 101  ·  NGC 5422  ·  NGC 5443  ·  NGC 5447  ·  NGC 5449  ·  NGC 5450  ·  NGC 5451  ·  NGC 5453  ·  NGC 5455  ·  NGC 5457  ·  NGC 5461  ·  NGC 5462  ·  NGC 5471  ·  NGC 5473  ·  NGC 5474  ·  NGC 5475  ·  NGC 5477  ·  NGC 5484  ·  NGC 5485  ·  NGC 5486  ·  PGC 214207  ·  PGC 214209  ·  PGC 214210  ·  PGC 214217  ·  PGC 214224  ·  PGC 2447141  ·  PGC 2448110  ·  PGC 2449271  ·  And 159 more.
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M101 and More Galaxy Hunting, David Payne
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M101 and More Galaxy Hunting

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M101 and More Galaxy Hunting, David Payne
Powered byPixInsight

M101 and More Galaxy Hunting

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Description

M101 and More Galaxy HuntingM101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy and Surrounding Galaxy Field, May 2022
Televue 127is - AIS6200MM
A-P 1100 GTO AE, Antlia Pro LRGB filters & Antlia 3nm Ha Pro (2022)& ZWO RGB & 7nm Ha (2021)
Jan 2021:

RGB (3 x 12 x 240s exposures, Gain 0, Bin 1x1)
Ha (12 x 400s exposures, Gain 100, Bin 1x1)

May 2022
L (28 x 200s exposures, Gain 0, Bin 1x1)
RGB (3 x 28 x 100s exposures, Gain 100, Bin 2x2)
Ha (28 x 300s exposures, Gain 200, BIn 2x2)

Here is a wider field view of M101, interesting due to the number of galaxies that are within shouting distance (give or take a few 100MMl-ys) of this imaging favourite. Lots of interesting shapes that have inspired me to do some more reading.

The other reasons I wanted to work on this image were
a) I had unprocessed data from 2021 that I wanted to make use of
b) I wanted to use the native camera driver, try some 200 GAIN shots, and try more advanced NINA sequencing.
c) Try out the new image integration options in Pixinsight, with local normalization, drizzle, etc.

All was fairly successful, but I was missing a spacer, causing my field to not be flat (using the Televue wide-field corrector) an my corner stars to be elongated.

Nonetheless, the image provides for some excellent galaxy hunting and M101 looked pretty good, including the outer spiral arms.

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M101 and More Galaxy Hunting, David Payne