This guy is like M42, you really need two exposure times, one for the
nucleus and one for the rest then blend them together, my skills aren't
there yet. The flattening of the ABG gate cuts in at about 25,000 ADU
but you can live with it to about 40k or so. After that it squashes too
much. I can adjust that and likely should. I just haven't done so.
You have to take out the power supply to get to the adjustment. Even
though I've worked with digital circuits for years I hate even simple
surgery on something this expensive. I'm not as steady as I used to be!
Anyway the core was in that squashed range making it difficult for me
to process with my limited skills. I learn each image but seem to
forget as much as I learn.

Longer subs with this size field of view is to satellites what a trailer
park is to tornado's. Even at 10 minutes I had one on nearly every
frame at that high declination. Lower down I average 2 per frame. If
two cross on separate frames, even with sigma reject, I get a diamond
shaped star. Sometimes they have intense color and are easy to spot.
Until my processing skills improve (I've only had PS CS since Christmas
so learning and forgetting at a high rate right now) I'm limited in what
I tackle successfully.

The other night one frame had a super bright satellite that left a
braided twisting trail that looked a lot like Saturn's F-ring. I need
to see if it was bright enough for Heaven's Above to have it listed.
Never seen a wide trail with a single pixel trail running parallel with
it before.

I'd think the wide field of your Epsilon would be a spider web of trails
to deal with.

Rick



Richard Crisp wrote:
"Rick Johnson" wrote in message
news
Actually it was sort of a pun as it is a drunken looking galaxy but it did
get sloshed about most of the arms are on one side of the nucleus for now.
Come back in a quite a few tens of millions of years and it should be on
the other side. From the literature I was reading it really is sloshing
back and forth as it orbits M101.

I doubt much more time would help much unless I went to your extremes. I
already have 60 minutes in with 18 micron pixels. This is one faint guy.
Though the nucleus is very bright. Any longer subs and it would have
saturated too much to get any detail there. It was burned in using


What sort of ADU counts did you measure in the core region in a subexposure
after exposure but before processing?
It looks to my eye that you could go a lot longer on subs without saturating
the core but you do have some brightish stars that may saturate but they are
comfortably away from the main galaxy so even if they get ugly they will not
damage anything.





the ST-7 on my 6" f/4 scope. Sorry, I still think in film terms.

Rick


Richard Crisp wrote:


here I was expecting to see a drunken galaxy.... that's what I think of
when I hear "sloshed".

but this is another that is distorted due to gravitational interaction:
how interesting.

looks like this one could have used a bit more exposure time.

but it's way better than anything I've been able to do lately


"Rick Johnson" wrote in message
...


A few hints of spiral arms on the "missing" side can be seen in the
photo. This one is "sloshed" by interaction with M101

14 LX200R @ f/10, L=6x10' RGB=2x10' all binned 2x2, STL-11000XM,
Paramount ME

Rick
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Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".