M101 - The Northern Pinwheel
Description: M101, The Northern Pinwheel galaxy, is located in the constellation of Ursa Major. This image was taken on February 14, 2009 from my home in Snohomish, Washington.
This is a first light test of my new Hyperstar lens on my C14. This lens from Starizona allows me to image with my 14" SCT at F/1.95. This gives me focal length of 682mm (measures by astrometry.) The system is fast enough that typical subexposures can be 30 seconds or less.
Equipment: The image was taken with a 14" Celestron C14 telescope on a Celestron CGE mount. The camera was an SBIG ST10XME with Astrodon filters. The exposures were guided using the ST-10's internal guide chip. Focus was done manually through the stock C14 focuser using CCDInspector's FWHM Monitor to aid in evaluating critical focus.
Exposures: 33x30 seconds each luminance, red, green and blue exposures binned 1x1.
Processing: Image capture was done with Maxim/DL 5. Calibration, registration, noise reduction and stacking were done in CCDStack. Curves, levels and zone processing were done in Photoshop CS2. Gradient processing was done with GradientXTerminator.
Click on image for full resolution.