frosty cove
I first imaged M101 over a year ago, but this spring I revisited it with the goal of capturing more of its faint tidal structures. After several additional nights, I arrived at 7h 35m of dual-narrowband data and 15h 28m of broadband data (post-culling). The added depth reveals more of the outer features, faint dust / star regions, and thousands of distant, golden background galaxies.
Processing was challenging of trying to balance the brilliant young blue stars in the spiral arms with the warm yellow core, together with subtle cyan Oiii regions & red hydrogen clusters, while trying not to push the saturation too much. I'm not quite sure if I'm very happy with it yet, what do you think?
With most of the data captured in 2025, supernova SN2023ixf is now almost invisible. Even so, M101 continues to stand out as one of the sky’s most striking grand-design spirals.
- 6"f4 Newtonian
- Televue Paracorr 2
- IMX571 OSC
- HAE29
- ~B4
- Antlia ALP-T
Total integration 23h 03m across 8 sessions (spring of 2024, 2025)
Astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/c9iuya/
formal token
grim hound
lapis jackal
lusty otter
rancid kernel