I can’t really complain about the number of (more or less) cloudless nights this year, but the vast majority of them were compromised either by bad transparency or the moon.
As I wanted to test a new focuser for my 8” GSO RC I used the night of April full moon and the following night for an image of M101. I shot more colour than usual, intending to use it as a colour channel for a planned luminance with my 6” APO, but so far it looks as if we are heading into the “white nights” before I get a chance to get some better lum data.
Original image scale was 0.87”/pixel, but I did 1.5x1.5 software binning to reduce the noise.
Taken from the middle of Berlin with an 8” GSO RC at 1068mm focal length on a G11 mount, Trius SX694 camera, 20x7.5min L, R and G, 17x7.5min B.
Stefan
http://ccd-astronomy.de/temp9/M101GSOsmallgut.jpg