M 101, ngc 5457, the pinwheel galaxy in Ursa Major - May 5th,2010 - 50% view
click the image for a 100% pixel view or HERE to return to the index page

This was a particularly good night. Both the the sky and the scope behaved for a long time. The sky was very quiet, dec wiggle less than one
arc-second much of the time, and transparency varied from good to very good. For some reason, the guide graph stayed at an rms of an arc-second also..
However, not all was perfect. Something moved during the night, after the imaging session, and my flat frames were unusable, requiring a 10% crop
and some careful retouch of a dust mote.. the rest is just old sct problems and not quite perfect correction of the field...

Telescope	Meade LX 200 Classic 12-inch at f/6.8 on Mitty Wedge in the Julian Observatory.
Camera	Canon XT/350d modified with Baader type 1 filter by Hap Griffin
Exposure	41, five-minute sub-exposures at iso 1600
Guiding	Explore Scientific ED 80 APO piggybacked n the LX200 using PHD Guide from Stark labs with Meade DSI pro I.
Software	Images acquired, calibrated, stacked and color corrected with Nebulosity 2.2.7 from Stark Labs. Further processing in Photoshop CS 3.
on-line links to more information	for more information try Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinwheel_Galaxy and the links to its partners.

copyright chuck kimball, julian, california, May 2010