M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy

20:05 18/4/2010 UTC

This beautiful galaxy was up high in the sky and weather was exceptionally good. This time I put more exposure on subs and got a lot better definition of color. I had to toss one LRGB set out from the stack due to strange dust attack on my chip. Fortunately they had gone away before next sequence and I got still quite large stack to work with. M101 is framing nicely to my field of view with surrounding space and some of the neighboring galaxies.

Camera: Atik Instruments 4000LE | Telescope: Skywatcher ED80 Pro 80mm f7.5 refractor, William Optics 0.8x focal reducer | Mount: Vixen GP-D2, Boxdoerfer PowerFlex MTS-3SLP drive controller | Filters: Baader 2" LRGB Filter Set | Guiding: The Imaging Source DMK 21AU04.AS CCD camera, Orion ShortTube 80mm f5 refractor, Stark-Labs PHD Guiding | Exposure: L 9x360s (54m) unbinned, CCD @ -25° RGB 9x120s (18m) each binned 2x2, CCD @ -25° Total exposure 1h48m | Software: CCDWare CCDStack, Adobe Photoshop CS4, Stark-Labs Nebulosity 2 | Location: 60°31'N 26°52'E (Koivula/Kotka,FI) | Image Field: 1.781 x 1.793 degrees | Image Center: Ra 14h03m20s Dec +54°22'24" |