Messier 101 With Supernova (SN2023ixf) (Jim Raskett)

Messier 101 With Supernova (SN2023ixf)

From Wikipedia:
The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy 21 million light-years (6.4 megaparsecs) away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781[a] and was communicated that year to Charles Messier, who verified its position for inclusion in the Messier Catalogue as one of its final entries.
M101 is a large galaxy, with a diameter of 170,000 light-years. By comparison, the Milky Way has a diameter of between 100,000 and 120,000[13] light-years. It has around a trillion stars. It has a disk mass on the order of 100 billion solar masses, along with a small central bulge of about 3 billion solar masses. Its characteristics can be compared to those of Andromeda Galaxy.
In 2001, the X-ray source P98, located in M101, was identified as an ultra-luminous X-ray source—a source more powerful than any single star but less powerful than a whole galaxy—using the Chandra X-ray Observatory. It received the designation M101 ULX-1. In 2005, Hubble and XMM-Newton observations showed the presence of an optical counterpart, strongly indicating that M101 ULX-1 is an X-ray binary. Further observations showed that the system deviated from expected models—the black hole is just 20 to 30 solar masses, and consumes material (including captured stellar wind) at a higher rate than theory suggests.

Hi Everyone,I wanted to image my first supernova and set up last week after hearing about the discovery of SN 2023ixf in Messier 101.I set up one evening because I was teased with a mostly clear sky at disk. Unfortunately, I made it only to the PA stage then the clouds moved in.I tried setting up several nights ago and left the scope out for three evenings to get about 5 ½ hours on M101 mainly to catch my first supernova image.

M101 has always been challenging for me to process. It is a beautiful galaxy, but I have never been happy with my processes. This time, I used GHS on both the starless and stars image(s) and like the result.This is my first pass at the data. Total integration is 5:40. I included 46 min of data from night 2 and will possibly dump that since the seeing was poor, I was shooting between clouds, and collected some of the 46 minjutes before astronomical darkness.Moon was at 55% in my Bortle 7 sky. A local communications tower is about ½ mile (0.8km away) is 408 ft tall (124m) and currently is flashing white strobes in the evening (supposedly they are working to get the red lights working again). So, I was happy with whatever I could get on M101.Of course, SN 2023ixf is very photogenic and easily captured!I will work more on the data and possibly include some 2021 data on the galaxy to improve appearances.Thanks for looking and comments very welcome!Jim

Original
B
C
Final
D

B

Description: More "pop" to the galaxy. Please let me know your thoughts!

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: Backed off the saturation some, lightened the background, increased sharpness a tad.

Uploaded: ...

D

Description: Contrast adjustment to try to reduce the "blur".

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7813556
PixInsight job	AGBA28QFHDP90K772I98EB4OFU5RYBB6
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	14h03m16s.96
RA (top/left)	13h59m31s.60
RA (top/right)	13h59m26s.71
RA (bottom/right)	14h06m56s.12
RA (bottom/left)	14h07m13s.25

Dec (center)	+54°20′54″.1
Dec (top/left)	+54°54′45″.5
Dec (top/right)	+53°48′11″.10
Dec (bottom/right)	+53°46′37″.4
Dec (bottom/left)	+54°53′07″.1

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