M51 with Vixen R200SS

Comments after test :

When I arriving that spot, the time had been 30min passed 3 in the very early morning. After gears setup, it was about 4, less than 2 hours left for imaging before the dawn.

Less than 20 min, all finder scopes were dewed up. So, I had to use the main scope as a "super" finder to look for and center this object. About 5 min later, I got it, and then coupled 350D onto the focuser.

Because of having two night experience with the sky conditions at this spot, I intended to shoot M51 more seriously. Previous experience with ATLUX mount told me that max. 2 min unguided exposure was possible at this focal length of 800mm if polar axis was aligned accurately. As no more time left, I didn't spent any time in check the accuracy of polar alignment and started the unguided exposures in a series of 20s, 30s, 60s and 90s respectively. So as to save more imaging time, I turned off the NR of the camera also.

Because I didn't have any image processing software could open RAW files from 350D, Jpeg format was selected again. That resulted some hot pixels left in the final image above after stacking.

Though the image is a little noisy, that has been the best M51 image captured since my life in astronomy. Now I know how to use DeepSkyStacker to stacking RAW formatted images. So, I think I can capture a cleaner M51 next time.

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© All images are copyright William L.T. Ng.