Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

This is an image of M82 I got last week with the Meade LX200 16 inch with a focal reducer that was really made for an F 7.5 refractor. I found that with the F 10 telescope the reducer seems to get a lot of internal reflections that forced me to really clip the dimmest areas to reduce them to a decent point, this removes most of the IFN, more distance galaxies and some of the fainter parts of M82. The flats taken with the focal reducer don't work as well also. I'm going to go back to imaging at prime focus and try again once the storms are gone and the moon is less full. All comments questions and suggestions are welcome.

Details:
All subs take at -20c with a ASI 62000MM pro monochrome camera. All subs calibrated with darks, flats and bias frames. The moon was just past first quarter on the nights the exposures where taken. All shot binned 1x1 with gain set to 100.

Frames used
43 frames at 4 minute exposures each with the luminance filter (172 minutes total luminance exposure time (2hr 52min) )
30 frames at 4 minute exposures each with the red filter (120 minutes total blue exposure time (2hr))
25 frames at 4 minute exposures each with the green filter (100 minutes total green exposure time)
21 frames at 4 minute exposures each with the blue filter (84 minutes total blue exposure time)
24 frames at 15 minute exposures each with the Ha filter (360 minutes total Ha exposure time (6hours) )

Total exposure time (836 minutes (13 hours, 56 minutes).
The red and Ha were combined with more weight given to the HA for the red channel.

M82

(Download)

tony85629 Loc: Sahuarita, Az

Nice! Great detail.

Rileychas Loc: San Diego, California

Beautiful work, thanks for sharing

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi tony85629
Thanks for the comment and for viewing the image of M82. The biggest issues I ran into was the reflections in the focal reducer that forced me to clip a lot of the dimer parts of the image.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Rileychas
Thanks for viewing the image of M82 and for the comment. I expect to get a better image at prime focus so that I don't have to clip the lower brightness areas due to the reflections in the focal reducer.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Excellent Ha response.

bwa

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi bwa
Thanks for checking out the image of M2 and for the comment. Unfortunately the focal reducer doesn't work real well on the F10 optics so I will be going back to prime focus to try again.

Marc G Loc: East Grinstead, West Sussex, England

Great image with lots of great detail mate.
Reducers & flatteners are a right pain

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Marc
Thanks for viewing the image of M82 and for the comment. I'm giving up on using this reducer on the F10 scope and use in only on the refactor it was made for. I plan on redoing M82 at prime focus once the moon gets farther away from full and when the skies clear up (hopefully in the next few weeks),.

stepping beyond Loc: usa eastcoast

That's a sweet image , awesome work.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi stepping beyond
Thanks for checking out the image of M82 and for the comment. I expect to improve on this image when the troublesome focal reducer is taken out of the optical train as it didn't work like I had hoped the F10 telescope.