M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy / H-Alpha |
Object: M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy: A spiral galaxy located in the constellation Canes Venatici. The estimated distance is approximately 37 million light years. M51 has a visual brightness of 8.4 (mag.) Telelscope: LX200 10" @ f/4 Camera: Starlight Xpress MX916, w/ SXV upgrade Guiding: SXV guider through AT1010 @ f/6 Exposures: Lum = 25 X 240s (100 minutes) Filters: Schuler Luminance Comments: Taken from home. Captured and processed with Astroart 3.0. Layers in Photoshop 7.0. My second attempt at M51. I tried a few new techniques with suggestions from the experts at the Starlight Xpress Yahoo Group. Will be adding RGB soon. Tried without the IDAS Filter. The image scale was 2.33 arcsec/pix. The wind was a little trouble but died down toward the end of the night. |