Hi All,
Time for change with some mainstream targets as opposed to obscure. This will be one of only a couple of galaxies I'll image with this set up I suspect. I don't mind how people slice and dice with image scale/sampling, galaxies need focal length for magnification and this rig simply hasn't got enough to do them justice. There are however a few reasonably sized galaxies worthy of imaging, perhaps not because of the detail within the galaxy itself but to display how far the galaxy extends.
Here's my rendition of
M83
Processed in CCDstack, PI and PShop. Conventional L[HA+R]GB. This is not the prettiest of images as some of the data used was taken while the optical train was being worked on. Several of the subs looked reasonable so decided to use them. Not a large data set either but plenty of signal as one could expect with 16" of aperture operating at F/3.5 under the pristine dark skies of SSO. I am grateful of the support team at iTelescope SSO for putting up with my persistent annoyance in getting the optical train tuned. Corrector to CCD optical back focus requirements with the new Aspen CG16070 has been a challenge. Its now as close as I'll get it having mounted the filter wheel directly to the Aspen body so that the adapter plate is out of the path. There are likely a few more tweaks that could be performed but at this point I'm happy the system is finally producing results. There is an hour of Ha data using 900s subs to bring out the HII regions. I was quite impressed by how attractive this galaxy looks in Ha as such I've included an attachment displaying this emission line.
Cheers