Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

The weather hasn't been great lately, however last night you could see the stars through a light layer of clouds, but it was calm. So I bit the bullet and took some shots of M82, the light layer of clouds did interfere a bit and forced me to crank up the integration time to 2 seconds on the guide ccd (at 1 second it would periodically loose lock as the star it was guiding on would fade out as thicker parts of the high clouds would role by). In any case here is the result of the integration of 28, 6 minute long subs taken with the DSLR with the ISO set to 1600 at F10 with a 4096mm focal length. I also used 20 dark frames, 30 flat frames and a master Bias frame I created and use for all the DLSR astro images. The image was processed with pixinsight and cropped a bit to center the M82 (The cigar galaxy). For reference I've included the worst sub and the best sub that I used in the integration (The cloudiness is more apparent if the worst sub). I expect a clear night would work much better at getting the dimmer background IFN (Integrated Flux Nebula) in the area. In the future I hope to get some shots with an HA filter and large format Astro camera to capture more of the gas coming out of the galaxy which is mainly invisible in these images, (currently waiting on some stuff I've had on order for a couple of months actually gets here). All comment suggestions and questions are welcome.

M82

(Download)

Worst sub due to high clouds (The image is off centered to get a good guide star in the off axis guider)

(Download)

Best sub (still some clouds just not as thick)

(Download)

Europa Loc: West Hills, CA

You got some nice color ad detail for fighting off clouds.

SeamusMac Loc: Walla Walla, WA

Wow!

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Europa
Thanks for checking out the M82 image and for the comment. It came out better than I expected with the high clouds, but I had not had a chance to get out lately and so I took what I could get.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi SeamusMac
Thanks for checking out the M82 photo and for the comment.

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

I can always count on you to bring the goods. The best I've ever gotten is close to your best sub. Time to get more serious. Thanks for setting the bar higher.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi alberio
Thanks for viewing the M82 image and for the comment. I expect to try again when the weather clears up and hopefully some parts I ordered get here, there is a lot more to capture in the gas blowing out of this galaxy that the DLSR doesn't capture (I believe I need long exposures of HA to get this data).

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

It's like being in a fishbowl at times, trying to see through the clouds.
I've gotten to where if it looks to be cloudy at all I just call it a Netflix night.

(Watching some violent movie is better than the TV. And no commercials lying to me either. LOL!)

I think I like your best sub best. The finished one isn't my style.
Sorry to be brutally honest Ballard.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi SonnyE
Thanks for checking out the photo and the comment. Yep it might be a bit over cooked. I like to play with the image and pull out different detail. I made another version that doesn't have the sky black and does bring out more of the galaxy and some of the IFN, the color is probably off a bit still.