Title: M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy in Ursa Major
Description:
While fine-tuning my Celestron C8 regarding the correct focal lenght to use with the 0.63x reducer/flattner, I decided to use the Messier 101 to do the calibration of the optical tube.
St. Peter was also a friend in this process, which gaved us in the island a four clean night in conjunction with a lower and Crescent Moon in the horizon, which allowed to go after this type of target in broadband. Actually I just used an UV-IR cut filter.
The EQ-5's last modification also played a huge role on this, since I continued to achive a total 0.56 RMS wich oscilate up to 0.88 at maximum, giving a perfect tracking in a payload of about 8,5kgs of imaging hardware. I could have done it more frames for integrate, but I was running a second rig in the Orion constellation that I couldn't miss it, so I had to cut short the among of time spent in the Pinwheel since I had only one mount.
Never the less, I'm very pleased with the results.
RGB (CFA + Baader UV/IR Cut filter) 300s x 66 F/6.3 - Gain 397 - Bin 1x1 - Offset 30 - Focal Lengh 1280mm
33 Dark Frames + 180 Flats Frames + 130 Dark Flat Frames + 50 BIAS Frames
The Moon was in the Waxing Crescent phase at 9.10% of ilumination on the first night of acquisition, in a Bortle scale of 4 (21.63 Mag/Arc.Sec).
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