March has been a great month for imaging with several full nights of data capture. I've got three more images in my processing queue after this one. This is my second try at M101 and it seems to be the target I'll never be happy with. I am realizing that it is pretty faint and needs a lot of integration time, especially in light polluted skies. This is definitely an improvement over my first attempt last year (
https://astrob.in/8qmhye/0/). Even with 13 hours integration time this time, the faint outer spirals really blended into the background noise, making it tough to keep any contrast. I've been trying hard not to over-darken my backgrounds, but I didn't like what I was getting overwise here.
I also tried taking a little data using my L-Extreme as an attempt to accentuate the hydrogen star-forming regions of the galaxy; it seemed to help (though it was a lot more effective on M81).
Most of my data was taken when the moon was about the first quarter and started high in the sky. I actually did a little playing around with my raw frames and made a little comparison of an early image when the moon was near maximum height against one late in the run when it was at the horizon. The difference was drastic (even more than I expected) so I uploaded a comparison to my staging area and did a little write-up here (
https://astrob.in/r1lh1l/0/).
Given the suburban skyglow compounded with the moonglow, I guess this is probably the best I can do on M101 - reasonable expectations......
Comments