Messier 101 (M101) This bad boy face-on galaxy is 170 light years wide and its distance is a mere 21 million light years away. This galaxy is much like the renowned Andromedia Galaxy. You may remember an earlier photo of M101 I posted about a year ago which included an exploding supernova. That supernova is no longer visible as the star is dying and a goner.
My picture this year is at FL1470 as last years was FL 517. This year I took a stack of 109 frames each 30 seconds of exposure. With 30 seconds I include guiding in the process to ensure the scope mount does not drift too far off target. The final stack had the stars removed and several Generalized Hyperbolic Histogram stretches applied. Finally, the stars were standard histogram stretched and accurately placed back on the GHS stretched stack. The results are below:
Love this! Impressive detail and colors.
ReplyDeleteVery cool sir Randall
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