M51/NGC 5194 interacting spiral galaxy: back in space!

Nothing is more practical than a good theory :) Now I can go for two minutes unguided.

Note the tidal tails of a companion galaxy and a little "fuzzy" in upper right corner.

Upd: I suspect two more fuzzies, both below companion galaxy, the one to the right might be elliptical and one to the left - edge-on spiral.

 

Aquisition time: 25.03.2016, between 20:45 MSK and the rising og the Moon.

Equipment:

Magic Lantern powered Canon EOS 60Da with Astronomic CLS-CCD clip-in flter via Baader Planetarium MPCC Mk II on Celestron Omni XLT 150 mm Newtonian riding Sky-Watcher NEQ6 Pro.

Aperture 150 mm

Focal length 750 mm

Tv = 2 minutes

Av = f/5

ISO 3200

Exposures: 30 plus 25 dark frames, 20 flats and 100 bias frames ('cause latter are free).

Processing: images were converted into Adobe DNGs and processed with Deep Sky Stacker in superpixel mode. Resulted image was cropped to 1024x1024 pix and contrasted in Photoshop.

 

Notes:

1) clear exposure overdose - I have collected too much skyglow. The "outer darkness" peak starts at 75 8-bit value. Obviously ISO 1600 would be quite enough.

If concidered more rigorously this means that at ISO3200 the camera might behave non-lineary and the amount of accumulated charge is not in direct proportion to the amount of captured light anymore.

 

2) This M51 image is a stub... (Attributed to Wikipedia :)

Done