Pinwheel Galaxy - 2021/05/11

[JimFox]

Here is the Pinwheel Galaxy from this last week out in Joshua Tree National Park. It's not perfect, but it's the best I can get it.

It felt good capturing it since I still have a totally manual tracker with no GoTo system. At 600mm to be able to pick out the Pinwheel Galaxy by eye and then aim my camera and get it dead center is a totally cool feeling. Pinwheel is a pretty small object and to do that made me feel good.

This has about 2 hours of data in it, I am working to be more patient on objects.

SkyGuider Pro - Tracking, not guided
Nikon D850 - DX Mode
Tamron 150-600mm @ 600mm
120 @ 60 secs, ISO 3200, f6.3
20 - Darks
10 - Bias
0 - Flats
Stacked in DeepSkyStacker
Processed in Photoshop

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[AlanLichty]

I would need some kind of automated system to find things for me - nice result.

 

[JimFox]

I would need some kind of automated system to find things for me - nice result.

Thanks so much Alan.

As fun as it is to find be playing needle in the haystack, I hope to be upgrading to a new mount that will let me find more space objects that are even harder to find.

 

[chuckp]

Nice one Jim you got the galaxy in the upper right which is pretty cool one also.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Good one Jim.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Jim,

You are definitely at a skill level beyond mine when it comes to finding objects by eye. Not a small accomplishment, and a totally required skill for using one of these small trackers and shooting almost anything beyond the moon and a few very bright targets. As I think has been mentioned before, being at a dark sky location where one wants to be to take these kind of shots often makes that task harder instead of easier, as the large number of extra stars you see there can really confuse things.

I like what you are doing with your colors lately - I think your post processing practice has helped in that regard. This has a little less definition than I am used to seeing from your results, perhaps also from post processing or a slight misfocus or maybe just the seeing or wind? Regardless, a small nit - this is a great object and you have rendered a very nice result here.

ML