On Saturday, June 3, 2017 at 3:39:05 PM UTC-7, Razzmatazz wrote:
Bad weather is finally over, and the skies have cleared here in the Midwest.

This large galaxy, M101, has a huge brightness range, which makes it a challenge to process. I once saw a Palomar glass plate of this object which showed the huge range quite well, because negative film has a non-linear response at the very bright end.

I posted this shot that I did last night as a negative. It shows the very faint extensions better than a normal image. It also brings back memories of the old film days before CCDs. Note the numerous tiny background galaxies.

https://www.astromart.com/common/ima...8.jpg&caption=

AP 17" F8 Astrograph
STL11K camera
40 x 5 minute Luminance
AP1600 mount

Razzy

Very nice!

At the eyepiece of my 25" F/5 I like to try and identify as many of the individual NGC's and other designations associated with M 101, as shown on this labeled photo (drawing?)...

http://www.deepskyforum.com/attachme...0&d=1432064109

.... it is quite a challenge to get more than about 6 or 8 of these stinkers visually... but that is what the visual aspect of the hobby is all about, IMHO.

I spent a lot of eyepiece time on this guy from about 9200 ft. on the slope of Mauna Kea last month, it was an amazing sub-arcsecond night, I had a 22" f/4.5 at my disposal...

Paul A