Pinwheel Galaxy - 20200525

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
This is from 2 weeks ago in Joshua Tree National Park where I have Bortle 3 skies. Fortunately the park had recently opened up after being closed down from the Coronavirus. I have gotten pretty comfortable with finding the Pinwheel Galaxy in the sky now, so that made it easier. I also added a low profile ball head to mount my camera and lens to the DEC bracket so that it makes it easier to manually fine tune the position of a DSO (Deep Space Object) in the frame of my camera.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

Nikon D850
Tamron 150-600mm @ 600mm
Sky Guider Pro
90 x 60 sec exposures @ f6.3
20 - Dark Frames
20 - Flat Frames
12 - Bias Frames

Pinwheel_20200525_d1w.jpg
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
It's really neat that you can get an image like this with a DSLR system.
Thank you Ben! It was especially fun for me because when I started doing Astrophotography a few months back this Galaxy seemed too small for me to be able to capture. I tired to find it with my gear and couldn’t. So to be able to now be able to find it I think is awesome too and makes it more meaningful.
 

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
Great result on one of the best targets out there. Cannot stress enough how hard it can be just to find your target with gear like you are using. Super job!

ML
 

Colorado CJ

Well-Known Member
Looks EXCELLENT, especially coming from a DSLR, and at only 1.5 hours! The Pinwheel is a hard one for me to capture in my Bortle 6 skies. You've shown me what I am missing with shooting in dark skies.
 
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