Wide field image of M51, the Whirlpool galaxy in Canes Venatici

I used Registar to create this composite of Hyperstar I and Hyperstar III data taken of the Whirlpool galaxy, M51.  Around 3 and a half hours of f#2 data taken with an 11″ SCT.  Clearly worth getting even more data in this region.

 

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4 Responses to Wide field image of M51, the Whirlpool galaxy in Canes Venatici

  1. Shawn says:

    Very impressed with your hyperstar images. Is there a trick to your sharp clean stars? I have a hyperstar 3 on order.
    The majority of HS images I have found online, the stars are not very well shaped.

  2. Greg Parker says:

    There are two things to get perfect star shapes. One is very good collimation which means CCDInspector and very accurate tuning of the HSIII. The other is to pay attention to what you have in front of the corrector plate doing the imaging. If the camera is a nice round cross-section like a Starlight Xpress camera then you aren’t going to get any funny diffraction effects leading to odd shaped stars. If it is a DSLR or a lumpy American CCD camera, then you can expect odd shaped stars as a result.

  3. Shawn says:

    Thanks for the info! I’m pretty fussy about collimation and focus. I always try for the best possible. And I’ll be using a QHY CCD with the Hyperstar 3 so I guess my stars should be good based on your answer! Very informative site overall. I’ve visited several times now and enjoy reading your posts. Thanks again! Cheers.

    Shawn / Canada

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