M51 photo (finally)

[Andy Resnick]

And lo, after 8 days of rain, the night sky did appeareth:

1 hour total integration [email protected] 800/5.6, ISO 2000.

 

[Chronos]

Nice shot. What was your optical train?

 

[Andy Resnick]

Nice shot. What was your optical train?

Just my telephoto lens and Sony a850... am I misinterpreting? Each exposure was 20s long....(?)

 

[russ_watters]

That's an 800mm telephoto lens? Impressive lens! What was it mounted on?

 

[davenn]

Well Done Andy !

Don't think I can see that one from here in the southern hemisphere .... aahh Stellarium tells me it gets to only a few deg above the horizon I would be shooting through murky thick atmosphere
I know its a perennial fav for the nthrn hemisphere guys

Im assuming that this was a 100% crop of the original image ( ie. you didn't resize the image out of the camera before cropping)
as M51 wouldn't fill the frame like that with 800mm on a full frame sensor ( nor on a aps-c sensor either for that matter)
and would explain the fuzziness and noise

This thread may be of interest to you astrophotographers ...
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=17500235


Dave

 

[Andy Resnick]

That's an 800mm telephoto lens? Impressive lens! What was it mounted on?

I rewarded myself three years ago with a Losmandy GM8- and have been extremely happy with it. I went from zero experience to 20s exposures in 15 minutes- alignment is trivial.

 

[Andy Resnick]

<snip>Im assuming that this was a 100% crop of the original image <snip>

Yep- that's a crop. The full frame shows nearby galaxies NGC 5198, IC 4263, and IC 4282. The image I posted here was made from jpgs, which accounts for most for the quality problems- The RAW version looks much better, not sure why I haven't posted that yet....

 

[Andy Resnick]

Had another good viewing night last weekend, was able to sharpen things up a bit. Here's essentially the full-frame (central 2/3, anyway):

It still needs some work, but the nearby low-surface brightness galaxies IC 4263, NGC 5169, and IC 4278 are clearly visible. Here's the 1:1 closeup:

Not bad... now it's time to switch over to the Virgo supercluster (weather permitting...)

Edit- slowly getting the hang of this whole 'post processing' thing....