clear sky chart

Job 9:9

Job 9:9-10
9 He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion,
the Pleiades and the constellations of the south.
10 He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed,
miracles that cannot be counted.
NIV

Saturday, May 12, 2012

M101 at Near Zenith

Its been weeks since I've had clear skies without a bright moon getting in the way, it was a Friday night and I could stay up all night if I needed to to get some good imaging in. Needless to say, I took advantage of my excellent sky conditions. The target for tonight was M101 in Ursa Major, the Great Bear. Imaging started a little later than I'd liked, as I had some trouble aligning the mount. I'm getting rusty, being I wasnt able to use the scope in some time. Finally I got it aligned, got the autoguider running and started snapping off frames. I took 20 frames, each 5 minutes in duration. I ended up with this image, after processing.



This is a full frame image.  Only the edges have been cropped out due to stacking noise.

After I had finished imaging M101, I opted to try a different object, M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra the Lyre. I will post an image in a separate post.

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