SUPERCEDED-NEWER VERSION AVAILABLE---M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy
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M101 is a large face on spiral galaxy that is about twice the size of our Milky Way Galaxy. This beautiful galaxy has a large number of H II regions - red hydrogen nebulae where star formation is taking place. In this image, one of M101's companion galaxies - NGC 5477 is easily visible in the upper left at about 10 o'clock.
In this photo, North is up. This image is cropped to 72% of the original full frame.
Exposure Details |
Lens |
Celestron C-8 SCT with Lumicon telecompressor |
Focal Length |
1100mm |
Focal Ratio |
f/5.5 |
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Mount |
Schaefer GEM - 7 1/2 |
Guiding |
Unguided |
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Camera |
Canon 20Da |
Exposure |
552 subexposures of 45 seconds each at ISO 1600 - just under 7 hours total |
Calibration |
30 darks, 30 flats, 30 bias |
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Date |
April 27, 2011 and May 30, 2011 |
Temperature |
46F |
SQM Reading |
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Seeing |
3 of 5 |
Location |
Pine Mountain Club, California |
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Software Used |
Images Plus 4.0 for camera control, calibration, stacking and digital development. Photoshop CS5 used for flat fielding, levels and curves, saturation adjustments, star shrinking, high pass filter, noise reduction, lab color, vibrance, and smart sharpening. HLVG for additional color adjustment, Carboni actions for additional noise reduction and additional saturation adjustments. |
Notes |
This is my first exposure with the Canon 20Da camera - its a big improvement in useability over the 350D. I'm still doing unguided exposures until I can sort out drive corrector issues. |
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