120 Hours of M82
Copyright: Matthew M Paul
You can right click on the image and select "view Image" for a full res photo,
or see
https://cdn.astrobin.com/thumbs/VLxjTZw ... XriP0L.jpg
Hello Everyone,
I don't generally share my images publicly but though that I would on this one.
I recently spent about 120 hours imaging M82 with a 9.25" Celestron, Reducer, Cooled IMX432 mono camera, Orion LRGB filters, and an Astronomik 12nm Hydrogen alpha filter. This was over an exactly one month period, covering 17 clear nights of imaging from November 13th to December 13th. 30 hours were spent with the Luminance filter, 8-12 hours each on RGB (more on Green and Blue), and 70 hours with the Hydrogen filter. Hydrogen was blended into the luminance channel, as well as the red channel.
I used 100 hours worth of the data in this image. This is this the most time that I have spent on a single image personally, and it is also the longest that I've seen a single person image the Galaxy Messier 82.
Not only does it look really neat but there is far more structure visible in this image than most other "Small Telescope" amateur image that I've seen. This is mainly due to the amount of time that was spent imaging. I did struggle with the stars looking "right" but at the end it's ok and we are always learning and improving.
Some interesting things to note:
• From what I have read, the Hydrogen being ejected from the core of M82 is propelled by massive amounts of stars going supernova.
• To the left of the galaxy you can see a small grey cloud. It would really be color much like the hydrogen near the galaxy, as it is also made of ionized hydrogen, by my camera and telescope were not sensitive enough to pick up on the red hue with the exposure time spend with the red color filter and the way that I edited it. This cloud feature is called "The Cap" and is not normally seen in small instruments or amateur images, from what I can tell
• Above the cap near the top edge of the image you can see a large grouping of tiny oval shapes. This is a cluster of galaxies that is around 2.5 billion light years away from us. Similarly there is a "Chain" cluster of small background galaxies to the right of M82.
• Throughout the image you can see small galaxies in the background of differing shapes sizes and colors.
• The image might seem dark, or bright, or the colors could be different on your screen as they are on mine. I need to calibrate my screens.
The camera has large 9um pixels, so the moderately sized sensor still only is 1600x1100px, a nice sized file. This is uncropped and 100% scale, but slightly compressed to meet the 500kb file size limitations.
DSS, Gimp, and Topaz AI were used to compile/edit.
Sub exposure times:
1000sec Hydrogen
300sec RGB
90 Sec Luminance
Thank you for your looking!
-Matt P
. But given the complexity of the target, I am happy!
Giruá, RS, Brazil. Bortle 4.
FotonAstro Astropipe 200MM F4 Newtonian Astrograph / AM5 Eq Mount
asi2600mc camera
pixinsight, photoshop
