My Latest M-51: A Comparison with Previous Attempts

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russ_watters
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Still climbing the learning curve...

Here's my latest M-51, nearly 4 hours worth of data, guided, lrgb. The skies were pretty inconsistent (making it noisier than it should be), so I'm actually pretty pleased with the result.

When imaging, I accidentally slid my filters the wrong direction and ended up with two sets of reds - it took about 4 hours of mostly wasted processing time to figure that out. Tonight I had just enough transparency to redo the blue (it isn't great data, but it'll do). I'm still fiddling with the image, but this is about 95% complete. Note the dim, distant galaxy in the upper-right.

Compare with my previous two tries at this galaxy...
https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1238705&postcount=156
https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=999862&postcount=125

I just bought an Orion ED80 apochromatic refractor to use as a guidescope and for widefield imaging. I haven't taken many pictures of clusters with my new scope because the fov is too small, so I'll probably get a bunch in the next few weeks (they are easy - they don't take much exposure).
 

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Pretty nice, Russ. You'll probably have fun with that APO. I've got an 80mm f:5.6 Vernonscope APO that is pretty nice as a WF imager.
 
I'm loving your site russ, nice gallery
 
Thanks. I've been updating it a lot lately.

Here's a new pic of M63 I took a few days ago. Compare it to the previous one on my site...

I still have a lot to learn, but it is fun being on the part of the learning curve where improvements from one image to the next are drastic.
 

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All I can say is WOW!.
 
russ_watters said:
Still climbing the learning curve...

Here's my latest M-51, nearly 4 hours worth of data, guided, lrgb. The skies were pretty inconsistent (making it noisier than it should be), so I'm actually pretty pleased with the result.

Here's a new pic of M63 I took a few days ago.
Very nice, considering the skies through which the light must pass.

You need to get out west - like the Grand Canyon - where the skies clearer.

Now this is what you could do if you had your own satellite.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/12mar_stereoeclipse.htm?list183321
 
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