My first visit to M51 with my Artemis 285 camera. A Combine of 42x180s exposure, a total of 2.1 hours. This image was taken using my new Baader multi purpose coma corrector. This coma corrector has worked magic on edges of my images. Although now my focuser is *really* struggling. This is the first DSO with Artemis that I have felt was of sufficent quality to post the full sized version.
During processing I struggled a bit to get the field flat, but I am please to have some of the fainter features of the galaxy showing. Also, a lot of field galaxies such as
This image was autoguided using my 400mm focal length refractor and my black and white SC1 webcam.
Captured in Artemis Capture. Calibrated, aligned and combined in Maxim. DDP applied to long L layer. Some filtering in Maxim and tweak curves, resize and save in photoshop
8th April. During a bright moon I have tried to add some colour to the image. Not as good as I would like - lots of gradient in the colour that I don't like. But it is a start. This effort is not shown on the right but can be found here.
13th April. I have reprocessed the colour. I am much happier now. Maybe a touch saturated in the red and the background is not quite chromatically flat, but who cares!!!
Later on... Hmmmm maybe the background is a tiny bit green.
Current Imaging equipment configuration
Exposure Details :
Coma Corrector 42x180s on 200mm @ F5 with ART285
Curdridge Observatory, Southampton,UK
