Southern Pinwheel Galaxy - M83

[JimFox]

I initially thought that this is a Galaxy that could only be captured from the Southern Hemisphere. But it turns out that it pokes it's head above the horizon once in a while. So I have set to capture it. This is data from 2 consecutive nights with the Seestar S50 from out at Joshua Tree last week. The 2nd night had a 50% moon, but since the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy rises later in the night, the moon wasn't an issue.

Seestar S50
UV/IRcut filter
450 Lights @ 30 seconds
Darks are combined when the Seestar images
Flats aren't needed

Processed in Pixinsight
BlurXtermintator
NoiseXterminator
StarXterminator
Finishing Touches in Photoshop

All comments are welcome,

Jim

 

[AlanLichty]

Easy to see how it gets its name. Nice palette.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Really nice. Someone more creative could have named it M&M Galaxy.

 

[JimFox]

Easy to see how it gets its name. Nice palette.

Thanks Alan. Indeed it does have that feel.

 

[JimFox]

Really nice. Someone more creative could have named it M&M Galaxy.

I appreciate that Jameel. Mars Inc, should do that! With their last name, it would be appropriate that they could name a galaxy after one of their candies. Though, I am glad they haven't, or I would be eating M&M's every day.

Not sure if I have mentioned this, but I worked for almost 25 years for M&M Mars. It was so awesome, they are such a great company and always took care of us. One of the perks, was that in the office they had a 6 foot tall rotating bin assembly filled full of the various candies they made. So everyday we could go in their and grab a Snickers, Milky Way bar, M&M's, Skittles, etc... you name it and we could get it free every day. That was one awesome job!

 

[Comet Hunter]

Nice capture

 

[Mike Lewis]

OK, after your most recent post in this thread I am obsessed with chocolate! Yummmm....

I must say this is an excellent Seestar result. One of the fellows in the astro Zoom group I belong to is shooting with a Seestar and he sent me some of his data to play with. I guess he has much worse skies and some bad local lights or something because the gradients on his data were awful. I tried his individual FITs files first and of course the field rotation was killer. Then I played with the stacked preprocessed FIT file and it was better. But nothing like this quality. No doubt sky quality enters into it, but you are really getting the most out of your setup I would say.

ML

 

[JimFox]

OK, after your most recent post in this thread I am obsessed with chocolate! Yummmm....

I must say this is an excellent Seestar result. One of the fellows in the astro Zoom group I belong to is shooting with a Seestar and he sent me some of his data to play with. I guess he has much worse skies and some bad local lights or something because the gradients on his data were awful. I tried his individual FITs files first and of course the field rotation was killer. Then I played with the stacked preprocessed FIT file and it was better. But nothing like this quality. No doubt sky quality enters into it, but you are really getting the most out of your setup I would say.

ML

Thanks Mike, I am happy how this turned out.

With the little sensor in the Seestar, the darker the skies the better for sure. I have found that for galaxies, there just is no point in capturing them at least in my Bortle 9 skies in SoCal.