Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Last night I set up to take a bunch of LRGB shots of M106. The blue subs got short changed when the house got in the way. (~4 hours of total integration time for the image below). The image definitely needs more integration time so I plan to take some addition luminance and blue subs too night to hopefully bring out more of the spiral arms and be able to stretch the image farther without adding too much noise. I also plan to take bunch of HA shots to bring out some more the features that should be visible in the galaxy. This image where all taken at F10 at a 4096mm focal length, then stacked and processed with pixinsight. These where taken with a second hand SBig 11002 CCD camera.

M106 (a bit short changed on the blue due to the house getting in the way).

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J-SPEIGHT Loc: Akron, Ohio

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Very nice shot!

Europa Loc: West Hills, CA

Very nice Ballard. Those arms are tough to get. Looking forward to seeing if you can get more of it.

fjwallace

Nice image! Stars are pretty round and you captured a lot of tiny galaxies that look great when zoomed in! Congratulations and thanks for sharing!

fjwallace

Forgot to ask - what are you using for equipment? Thanks again!

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi J-SPEIGHT
Thanks for checking out the image and for the Thumbs up

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi yssirk123
Thanks for viewing the image of M106 and for the comment.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Europa
Thanks for viewing the image of M106 and for the comment. The arms are dim so hopefully with some more integration time I can bring them out. I've been playing with the trial version of SGP to automate the image taking, but last night I screwed up and didn't have the laptop plugged in and its battery died, so I'll be trying again tonight to get some more shots to include. (Sequence Generator Pro appears to be a decent product so I expect to purchase it before the trial period runs out, once I got the correct step size for auto focus it worked like a champ, I used it successfully on the first set of subs used on the image above and didn't need to stay up until 3:00AM.)

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi fiwallace
Thanks for viewing the image of M106 and for the comment. On close inspection there are a lot of other galaxies in the view, I expect more integration time will bring them out better. I only found listing for 2 of them in the sky X program. NGC 4248 which only has a very small portion visible (Didn't fit in the field of view) as a dim cone of light on very bottom just right of center (Magnitude 12.4 but we only see a small dimmer part of the edge of it). PGC 39615 (Magnitude 16.4) in the upper left corner. I saw at least 10 others that are either elongated blobs of light or fuzzy blobs that are probably not stars but more distant galaxies.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi fjwallace
For this image I was using a 16.25 inch Meade LX200 Schmidt Cassegrain (F10), a second hand SBig 11002 camera running at 0 degrees, Astrodon LGRB filters in an SBig filter wheel, an Astrodon MOAG for off-axis guider with a Starlight express Lodestar X2 ccd for guiding. The mount is an Astrophysics 1600GTO with absolute encoders sitting on a home made base (see images below). Software used, PHD for guiding, Sky-X to send the mount to the correct location and Sequence Generator Pro to focus the image using an Optec TCF-Leo focuser and control the camera and filter wheel to take the sequence of images, dither between frames and park the scope at the end of the sequence. I'm currently using the trial version of Sequence Generator Pro but intend to buy it after seeing what it can do to automate the image taking. The above software was running on my laptop running Windows 10 pro and was accessed from my desktop using a Remote Desktop connection. I also used PixInsight to stack and process the subframes and create the final image that was run on my desktop which I built to handle PixInsight requirements.

Here are some links to the scope and mount.
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-645063-1.html
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-676946-1.html

Mold for base

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Rebar added in

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concrete poured.

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Heavy gauge pipe bolted to concrete

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Astrophysics mount bolted to base over 400lbs on pallet jack to move it around

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Me with the base for scale

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SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

I like it. It came out nice.
I'd like to watch as you add Ha to it.

Yep, stuff gets in the way sometimes.
All a part of the learning curve.
Sometimes I struggle with timing, too.
But since I shoot color, I'm just happy to get what I get.
And my long run exposures.

I'm kind of on a sabbatical right now. Too much other things going on.
And not much in the way of favorite targets.
Oh, I go out and gaze up at the stars. But too pooped to pack it out-pack it in.
In a few weeks or so, maybe.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Sonny
I just finished my first HA sub on M106 as I type this and it looks good. I'm going for 15min subs and plan to take 12 of them (3 hours worth). Guiding is going well tonight with a total RMS error <0.4 arcseconds. I also have set up the sequence to capture an hour more Blues and then Darks for the 15min subs. The sequence still has 6:10 minutes to go, so I'll see what I got in the morning.

Well in two weeks there will be a total lunar eclipse to catch in the early morning of May 26th. From Ca we can see totality and will only miss a bit of the penumbral eclipse on the way out. I will be visiting Morro Bay at the time and should be able to watch moon set into the ocean partially eclipsed at that time.

stepping beyond Loc: usa eastcoast

That's awesome Ballard , I like those arms you brought out. At least you're getting to run on something up there. I cheat and check the Hubble image and that's pretty good.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi stepping beyond
Thanks for checking out the image of M106 and for the comment. Hubble brings out a lot more detail, but it makes for a good why to check tp see that what I got was real and not just noise (particularly to see if some of the faint fuzzies in the image are really just much more distant galaxies).

My second version added in a bunch of Ha and more integration time and brought out a bit more detail.
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-697059-1.html