EarthSky Community Photos

Submit your photo here. Comment or upvote on photo pages. Search via photographers' names. More improvements coming! To help, please donate.

Ernest Jacobs
Eden, NY 14057
04/26/2023
11:00 pm

Equipment Details:

Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Telescope: Explore Scientific Essential Series ED80 Air Spaced Triplet
Aperture/Focal Ratio: f/6.0
Focal Length: 480 mm
Mount: Sky-watcher USA EQ6-R Pro
(no filter)

Post-processing Details:

All pre and post-processing in PixInsight. DBE, SPCC, BlurXT, NoiseXT, Histogram Transformation, StarXT, Curves, LHE, MMT, & Pixel Math

Image Details:

M101, also known as The Pinwheel galaxy. It is a very large Grand Design spiral galaxy located in Ursa Major (just off the end of the Big Dipper's handle). The galaxy is about 170,000 light-years across (compared to our Milky way at about 110,000 light-years across) and contains about a trillion stars. Although this is a small target for my imaging setup, the image is cropped in, but not too much. Wanted to keep some of the other small faint fuzzies in the image.
Exposure: 124 x 120 Sec for 4.13 hours total exposure, 50 Darks, 50 flats, & 50 DarkFlats
Gain/ISO: 100
Offset: 50