The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy - M83

PhotonCollector (Paul) · #1 29-03-2007, 10:12 PM

Hi all,

Here's an image I did last week of the Messier 83 galaxy (NGC 5236).
It wasn't the best of weather conditions, gusty winds, lots of sky fog and the usual Friday night light pollution, though the image still turned out reasonable well.

There's a higher resolution version of this image at
http://www.skylab.com.au/pmsa/ngc5236b.html

The image was a 40 min autoguided exposure (20 x 2min subs) using my 12" GSO scope, you can see the rest of the imaging equipment details at the above link.

I'm planning to have another attempt at M83 but this time with a lower ISO setting and much more exposure time.

cheers

h0ughy (David) · #2 29-03-2007, 10:21 PM

fantastic Effort Mr Mayo!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gama · #3 30-03-2007, 12:29 AM

Magic.

Very well done.

Theo

ballaratdragons (Ken) · #4 30-03-2007, 01:08 AM

Very nice Paul.

Much better than mine from last week, but totally different cameras too. I like the very fine detail you have captured. Excellent.

iceman (Mike) · #5 30-03-2007, 06:10 AM

Beautiful image, Paul.

Astroman (Andrew Wall) · #6 30-03-2007, 07:32 AM

Great image Paul, gives me a stepping stone on what exposures are needed, thanks.

Ric · #7 30-03-2007, 07:59 AM

Lovely image Paul, the colours are excellent. They really bring it to life as they say.

Cheers

Phil · #8 30-03-2007, 08:00 AM

very nice photo keep then caming
Phil

Garyh · #9 30-03-2007, 08:20 AM

Very nice Paul...lovely colors in the galaxy and the stars!! well done for the conditions.

RB (Andrew) · #10 30-03-2007, 12:02 PM

Excellent work there Paul.

Well done.

tornado33 · #11 30-03-2007, 01:17 PM

Theres lots of detail there in the arms, the dark nebulae bright nebulae and stars really show up well. Looks like the autoguiding is working very well.
Scott

PhotonCollector (Paul) · #12 30-03-2007, 11:06 PM

Great stuff - you all liked the image!

With the exposures Andrew [Astroman] while 2 minute long sub-exposures are fine I would however recommend longer subs to get more signal in each frame. In the 2 minute exposures I find there isn't quite enough signal (photons-collected) with the lower ISO settings.

However on the night I took these images I specifically shortened the exposure time to 2 minutes as the wind gusts kept blowing the telescope around, so I wanted to minimize the subs I would get with guiding errors and get at least some imaging done.

thanks all.