M81-M82

JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
It's been cloudy here the last week or so, and so when it showed clear skies and no wind I jumped at it! It was a full moon, which wasn't ideal of course, and I couldn't get out to my normal dark sky sites, so I had to shoot from the rickety upper deck at my daughters house. And at my daughters house at the moment there are no nebula's I can capture until about 3am. So that meant going for a galaxy.

I initially wanted M51, but when I aimed at it, I realized it was at 90 degrees to the moon. So I looked at what options were more to the north, and I saw M81-M82 fit the bill. So that's what I captured all night. I had to pick up my granddaughter from gymnastics at 9pm, so I wasn't able to actually start capturing images until about 10pm. So I lost a few hours on it, but I stayed on it the rest of the night. I wasn't sure how good it was going to look, but I think the end result looks pretty good.

I know the stars are a bit bright, and the background a bit dark. That's my fault for being so focused on getting the most detail I could out of the galaxies, the background got darker then I would have liked. But at the time I thought not a big deal, as I was planning to shoot some Ha data to blend in later, so I had kind of thought of this as temporary. But looking at it now, I am actually pretty happy, and not sure if I will mess with the Ha data or just go after something else the next clear night.

152 - Lights at 120 secs with the Optolong L-Pro Filter
30 - Flats
30 - Dark/Flats
10 - Darks

iOptron Gem28
ZWO ASI2600mc Pro
ZWO 120mm Mini - Guide Camera
Askar Fra500
Stacked in Pixinsight
BlurXterminator
NoiseXterminator
StarXterminator
Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop

All comments are welcome,

Jim

M81_M82_20230406_dw.jpg
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Ben Egbert said:
Nice work for a deck improvising
Click to expand...
Thanks Ben.

Setting up on deck shouldn't be an issue, but my daughters deck all of the wood is rotting, so if you step on one side the other side moves. And with Astro the slightest movement will mess it up. So I had to be super careful.
 
Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
So a very good result, especially with the conditions. As you are aware, an unstable surface can really mess things up, but you appear to have worked around that constraint nicely. The details captured are nice, especially with respect to the Starburst galaxy M82. The only thing to mention (which is really just esthetics) is that most images I have seen of this, even without specific Hα being captured, show the starburst portion of M82 and the star forming regions of M81 as more magenta or red than the orange brown color you are showing here. Might be worth tweaking that a little as I think it would make those areas pop more and in this case might be more color accurate too. Just a thought, but a really nice job in any case.

ML
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Mike Lewis said:
So a very good result, especially with the conditions. As you are aware, an unstable surface can really mess things up, but you appear to have worked around that constraint nicely. The details captured are nice, especially with respect to the Starburst galaxy M82. The only thing to mention (which is really just esthetics) is that most images I have seen of this, even without specific Hα being captured, show the starburst portion of M82 and the star forming regions of M81 as more magenta or red than the orange brown color you are showing here. Might be worth tweaking that a little as I think it would make those areas pop more and in this case might be more color accurate too. Just a thought, but a really nice job in any case.

ML
Click to expand...
Thanks Mike. I had actually thought about the colors in regard to the orange brown. I had seen some images that are orange/brown and I had seen some redder. I decided to stick with the orange/brown as that seemed like the more natural color I had captured. But it's certainly something I can tweak too.
 
J

jsb

Well-Known Member
JimFox said:
It's been cloudy here the last week or so, and so when it showed clear skies and no wind I jumped at it! It was a full moon, which wasn't ideal of course, and I couldn't get out to my normal dark sky sites, so I had to shoot from the rickety upper deck at my daughters house. And at my daughters house at the moment there are no nebula's I can capture until about 3am. So that meant going for a galaxy.

I initially wanted M51, but when I aimed at it, I realized it was at 90 degrees to the moon. So I looked at what options were more to the north, and I saw M81-M82 fit the bill. So that's what I captured all night. I had to pick up my granddaughter from gymnastics at 9pm, so I wasn't able to actually start capturing images until about 10pm. So I lost a few hours on it, but I stayed on it the rest of the night. I wasn't sure how good it was going to look, but I think the end result looks pretty good.

I know the stars are a bit bright, and the background a bit dark. That's my fault for being so focused on getting the most detail I could out of the galaxies, the background got darker then I would have liked. But at the time I thought not a big deal, as I was planning to shoot some Ha data to blend in later, so I had kind of thought of this as temporary. But looking at it now, I am actually pretty happy, and not sure if I will mess with the Ha data or just go after something else the next clear night.

152 - Lights at 120 secs with the Optolong L-Pro Filter
30 - Flats
30 - Dark/Flats
10 - Darks

iOptron Gem28
ZWO ASI2600mc Pro
ZWO 120mm Mini - Guide Camera
Askar Fra500
Stacked in Pixinsight
BlurXterminator
NoiseXterminator
StarXterminator
Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop

All comments are welcome,

Jim

View attachment 58185
Click to expand...
This is a very nice image. You have captured some great detail!
 
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