M101 (Pinwheel Galaxy)
Characteristics:
RA (J2000): 14h 3m 10s
Dec (J2000): 54 degrees 21' 45"
Position Angle (Pinpoint): plus 90 degrees
Description:
M101 is a large, beautiful spiral galaxy in Ursa Major. For
visual observation, M101 is best seen using a low power eyepiece under
dark skies. Despite being relatively bright at magnitude 8.5, it
has low surface brightest due to its large size. There are many
smaller, faint galaxies in this FOV. More information about M101
may be found here.
Photographic
Details:
Date: March 6, 2010 (LRGB); March 27 (Ha)
Scope: Vixen VC200L at f6.4 on the
Takahashi NJP
Mount
Autoguider: SBIG ST-402
Camera: ST8300 -20C
Filters: Astronomik
Clear (unblocked), R, G, B filters
Exposures: Clear 44 x 5' =
220'; R 8' x 7 = 56'; G 10' x 6
= 60'; B 15' x 6 = 90'; Ha 420'. Total exposure 7.1 hours (LRGB)
Post-processing:
Calibrated in Maxim, aligned and
stacked using DeepSkyStacker, followed
by DDP
in ImagesPlus (IP). Further processing in Photoshop CS4. Ha was obtained on March 27 and
added to red channel in order to boost the HII regions.
Please
note: Graphics on this website may not be reproduced without
author permission.
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