M51

Hi,

Finally after a long time without shooting a galaxy I managed to put together a widefiled image of M51. This galaxy shows many Ha active regions, I tried to precess the image in a way the the Ha regions will stand out but without overprocessing it. I am happy with the result. I hope you like it.

Image details:

  • Acquired by Scott Johnson, Daniele Malleo, Rick Stevenson, Bret Charles, José Mtanous and John Kasianowicz.
  • Processed by José Mtanous
  • Telescope Ceravolo 300mm (corrected Cassegrain) @ f/4.9
  • Camera FLI PL-16803
  • Resolution 1.29″ per pixel
  • Astrodon Filters
  • Mount: Astrophisycs 1100
  • Capturing Software ACP, MaximDL
  • Processed with Pixninsight and Photoshop
  • Exposures: Ha 49 x 1800s, B: 28 x 1200s, R: 56 x 1200s, G: 32 x 1200s, L: 42 x 1200s

Center crop (native resolution)

M51_core

©José Mtanous

Full frame @ native resolution (slightly cropped)

M51_widefield

©José Mtanous

Another nice feature of this image is a dim structure close to NGC5198, at first glance it looks like a tidal tail, but I haven’t found any information about it. I checked the individual frames and the structure is not a processing artifact.

NGC5198

©Jose Mtanous