Though not a first light for my FLT91, it is my first full attempt at a target with this setup, now completely configured.  An unexpected clear three nights allowed me to collect data on two targets of interest.  I actually only got two nights in because the early evening of the second night was threatening with clouds and I fell asleep after a day of skiing.  So much for my commitment to this sport!

Here is another addition to my series of galaxy images that attempts to simulate a view of a galactic neighbor, some of its nearby family and also the deeper universe beyond.  I know that many will question the appropriateness of the removal of stars from such an image.  While this started as a lark, the more I do these and become deeply familiar with the extragalactic map beyond the Milky Way, I am becoming more committed to doing these.  Time spent doing this is extreme for such an image, but I am learning a bunch.  So much is left in the dust otherwise.  And in my situation, I certainly have the time to do these!  In any case, one more argument I use to fool myself into continuing this endeavor is as follows:  I think the goal for anyone who has done any form of astronomy at any level is the desire to get "closer" to those objects that we look at.  Rare are the optics used in such attempts that offer no magnification, but only an increase in photon collection.  We want to see these things up close, the closer the better.  Given the chance of flying to these objects and seeing them up close, many would do so.  In this case, the telescope is sampling a bit over three degrees of the sky in its longest dimension of the FOV.  As I sit at my computer with a fairly large monitor, I see this FOV at a about 30-40 degrees.  So if I want to imagine having traveled to see this field naked eye, I would have to travel 22.5 million ly in the direction of M101 to get this FOV.  (M101 is 25 Mly distant.)   MW stars really are irrelevant to the objects of our desire in cases such as this.  And as I do this more and more, I find them really annoying.  There is a reason why the Hubble Deep Fields seek out part of the sky with as few stars as possible to do their deep sky portraits.

That said, the mouse over offers a starred view, though even still, I have reduced the stars to a somewhat tolerable level.  

I have taught myself an alternate method of getting as faithful a starless image as possible.  It does not save me time, but certainly is more complete and less altering of the background than my earlier attempts.  At over 8hrs, this field can nowhere nearly match my deepest such "Traveler's" image,

The NGC4725 Family in the Foreground of The Universe - An Extragalactic View, which is 8+ hr using my RASA 11.  I am happy with the detail achieved here, given the modest aperature.  And the point of these is certainly the whole field at once view.  It is still fun to look for some features of those other galaxies as well.  After a little tweaking, I think I have the FLT91 almost perfectly set with back focus and tilt issues resolved.  Still need to add a fraction of a mm to backfocus and I do see some color in places.  The color may well just be the limits of the quality of the optics at this price point...  This image is SPCCalibrated.  Only the gentlest of BXT applied with "correct only" for stars, which does gently affect deconvolution overall.  I am finding that BXT Non Stellar Sharpening on these bright galaxies is much too damaging to structure.  It is hard to understand that staying away from "snake" artifacts when using the old deconvolution methods in PI were understood good practice back in the day, yet doing so with BXT is a good thing now.  In any case, at this scale, all that is pointless anyway.  No color saturation, nor CT contrast enhancing done here.  No differential stretch by masking.  The stretch may be a bit "loud", but I really like the diffuse star cloud signals between the dusty arms of M101.  There is something about the smoothness of those regions and yet also delicate clumpiness as well in other areas.  For those interested in the structure of the very center of M101, there are many other close-in views of these details from much better and larger diameter optics than used here.

I won't add too much about M101 or the other galaxies in this field, except to say that M101 is significantly larger than our home Galaxy.  It clearly has asymmetries that suggest some gravitational interactions from its neighbors.  However, it is only NGC 5474 and PGC 49448 (Holmberg IV) that show any evidence of tidal disruption, suggesting these two as the culprits.  NGC 5477 seems too small to be a player, but...  See the included annotated revision for ID of those.  Also note the imbalance in the field of the other galaxies.  Yes, the standout galaxies hint at this imbalance, but the smaller and more distant galaxies delineate this better.  This is one fact that is completely lost in the starred image.