M109 again, with the C11. With the ASI183mm

This is such a nice galaxy! Spiral arms and a central bar, beautiful! After the attempt to image it th elast nights with the C11 & Nikon, again a few nights (nights are short!!) now with the ASI183mm.

Th epixels are a bit small, and the C11 ‘s output is oversampled. In that respect the Nikon’s larger pixels (5µ) make more sense. However, this really worked out more acceptable then the previous attempts.

Using SIMBAD, you can identify some of the smallest and faintest patches in this image. SDSS J115703.88+532414.6 was about the faintest one with a listed green band magnitude of 20,893! The image itself measure 20′ x13′ end has a resolution of 0,6″ per pixel. Seeing was rather bad these nights, with nortwest sea air blowing over. Very clear however, with SQM 20,40 on average.

The C11 was guided with a 8×50 finderscope, using an ASI290MM. Autofocus was done using an Esatto 2″ focuser.

M109 3,8 hours LRGB C11 ASI183 Meldert May 2020
Searching the limiting magnitude
Astrometry from nova.astrometry.net

M106 in Close Up

M106 image on March 29-30th 2019, ASI183mmPro and Esprit120mm LRGB

A first LRGB attempt on this subject. I have never imaged M106 before, always exciting to explore a new galaxy. I find the outer spiral arms are not clear enough: need to add more data…

This was an LRGB combination using AstroPixelProcessor.

Clear again after 2 months!

Yesterday evening, a large break in the eternal cloud pack allowed at last some more imaging! Perfect for the first light of the ASI183MM and also the new guiding/planetary camera the ASI290MM.

During the imaging session, I could picture the setup before and after the streetlights were switched off…. Imagine the difference!

Lights still on
Nikon D750 30s 24mm iso800 F6dot7
Imaging in the plain light off a streetlight 30 meters from the scope… Nikon D750 30s 24mm iso800 F6.7
Streetlights switched off
Nikon D750 30s 24mm iso800 F6dot7
And a few seconds later the lights are switched off! Nikon D750 30s 24mm iso800 F6dot7 SQM values dropped a bit from 20,30 to 20,55
Continue reading “Clear again after 2 months!”

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