M51 - The Great Whirlpool Galaxy
Image details:
| Telescope | C-14 @ f11 on AP1200 mount |
| Filters | |
| Camera | FLI Dream Machine, full resolution. -30c cooling |
| Exposure | 16 exposures, 1 minutes each |
| Processing | Dark subtraction. 50 iterations RL deconvolution in Astroart |
| Other notes | Pretty good shot. Hand picked sharpest images. Steady seeing. 1.3 arc seconds/pixel. Need a good flat field correction to really extract the best data from this set. |
Image details:
| Telescope | Aries 16" RC @ f16 on AP1200 mount |
| Filters | None |
| Camera | SBIG ST-10XME binned 3x3. Cooled to -20. |
| Exposure | 5 exposures, 5 minutes each. Combined in MaximDL |
| Processing | Dark subtraction. 20 iterations Maximum Entropy deconvolution in MaxIm. Curve adjustment in Photoshop. Unsharp masking in Photoshop. |
| Other notes | First light testing f/16 optics on DSO.
Still working on getting system collimated properly. Seeing was ok. Unbinned FWHM was about 7-8 pixels at this scale so I did a 3x3 bin to reduce the image scale to a reasonable level. |
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Image details:
| Telescope | AP130EDT @ f8 on AP1200 mount |
| Filters | |
| Camera | Starlight XPress HX-516 |
| Exposure | not recorded |
| Processing | Drizzle processed in IRIS to double size and enhance resolution. Photoshop used for final contrast adjustment. |
| Other notes | This shot, while not the 'best', is a
demonstration of what can be accomplished with a small (5.1")
telescope. It is the highest resolution deep sky picture I have taken -
a feat when compared with those taken using the C-14.
The triangular stars are due to some lens pinch that I have been unable to resolve. |
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