M83 Southern Pinwheel Galaxy

[luka]

My longest exposure so far. Total 7.7h of 3 minute exposures (+ bias, darks and flats) taken on SW ED80 with self-made CCD Cam86 camera.

Stacked in PI, processed in StarTools (still haven't got the hang of doing masks properly in PI).

Taken over 3 nights from my light polluted backyard only 3km from Perth CBD (as the crow flies).
Being located in the light pollution central I was trying to see if adding more data will improve the image and with every new night of data the image improved quite a bit.

[raymo]

That's a ripper. If your darks match your lights you don't need biases; darks contain bias information.
raymo

[PKay (Peter)]

Amazing image.

Well done

[xelasnave]

That is a wonderful image and I assume you made the camera?
Fantastic effort.
Alex

[luka]

Thanks guys. I was quite surprised to get so much data from such a light polluted place but the integration time is quite long.

Originally Posted by raymo

That's a ripper. If your darks match your lights you don't need biases; darks contain bias information.
raymo

You are right, the darks match the lights and the biases are not needed. But the flats still need either dark flats or biases.

Alex, few of us made our own cameras based on the Sony ICX453AQ CCD sensor, similar to QHY8Pro. There is a link to the build thread in my signature.
I have to say I am quite happy to see how well the camera performed, we are still working on optimising the cooling.

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

Nicely done and all worth the effort.

[RickS (Rick)]

Hi Luka,

Perhaps a little black clipped (or maybe just a consequence of the light pollution?) but that's a really nice result.

Cheers,
Rick.