M101 (Northern Pinwheel) widefield

[Paramount]

Hi
I couldn't make up my mind whether or not to go out and try imaging last night because the weather was so bad during the day, ie snow in the afternoon and rain in the evening but it started to clear about 9pm and I eventually decided to give it a go at about 10pm. I thought I'd have a go at a galaxy for a change so I tried M101 as it was fairly high in the sky and away from most of the effects of light pollution. I set the computer to do 20x8 minute subframes unguided (one of these days I will be trying the autoguider), I didn't use longer than 8 minutes as when I tried a longer test exposure the core appeared a bit burnt out. Everything went fine until the dreaded meridian flip on the 19th subframe. Although the sky was clear ie no clouds the seeing wasn't too brilliant. There are a couple of other fuzzies which I am not sure about, one towards the top left and one towards the bottom right, I haven't had a look as to what they are yet, but any suggestions would be most welcome. A better quality image is on my website http://www.imagingtheheavens.co.uk
Taken with TMB 115 f7, no flattener (yet)
Paramount ME
Starlight Xpress SXVF H36 with broadband light pollution filter
Exposure 18x8 minutes unguided
Thanks for looking
Regards
Gordon

http://www.imagingtheheavens.co.uk/USERIMAGES/M101.jpg

[iceman (Mike)]

Lovely image, Gordon. Lots of detail in the spiral arms.

I can't believe you're not guiding!?? Just do it!

Also, when will you add some RGB data to these?

[Paramount]

Hi Mike
Thanks for the nice comments, I will try autoguiding someday as I have a lodestar camera that my girlfriend bought me for Christmas, I think it is just a case of time, putting two scopes on or an off axis guider and so forth. I have got a filter wheel but the problem I currently have is I have just taken delivery of a custom field flattener for the TMB which has already created a couple of problems as follows
1. There is insufficient back focus with it on so I am now waiting for a Starlight 3.5 inch extension in order to use it.
2. Currently I can't use my filter wheel with the flattener because it will add distance between the flattener and the camera and stop the flattener from working (apparently there is only +/- 1mm tolerance for variation with this flattener so when I get the correct adapters sorted out from FLI to go with my TMB and H36 camera, I can then get in contact with APM/TMB to make me the correct length adapter to go between the flattener and filterwheel/camera combination.
I could use the filter wheel with a 2" extension tube but there is already a lot of vignetting with just the camera
Sometimes having high end equipment can cause more problems than you could imagine
Regards
Gordon

[Ric]

A great looking image Gordon, nice and sharp with good detail.

Cheers