M 101 - Pinwheel Galaxy

M-57

M-3

M-13

M51

The Leo Triplet

The first clear night in two weeks. And even though it was the first quarter of a new moon, I felt I had to go out to WCO to do some imaging. The seeing was terrible as well. All in all, not ideal imaging conditions. I wanted to image the Leo Triplet (M65, M66 and NGC 3628) which, as it happens was only 20 degrees away from the moon. This is a quick process of the image. 10 exposures only at 5 minutes each. No black frames and no flats. I'll be reprocessing this one when I have some time.

M 101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy

I'm not very happy with this image of the pinwheel. It was taken under light polluted skies in my backyard. I wanted to test my new Smartguider and had planned to go the the RASC Calgary Observatory (The Wilson Coulee Observatory) south of Calgary. But when I looked outside at 6:30PM, the skies looked quite cloudy and I didn't want to make the drive to the observatory, only to be clouded in. So I stayed home. I looked outside at 9PM and it was perfectly clear. I grabbed my scope and set it up on the back deck and pointed it to M101 which was quite high in the sky, hoping to avoid as much light pollution as possible. I shot 20 subs (10 at 180 sec. and 10 at 360) to test the smartguider. It was windy, but the smartguider ended up giving me 18 good images. In the end though I needed longer exposures and dark skies to make this one work. M101 is quite diffuse and needs a longer exposure. Without dark skies there is not enough contrast to pull the galaxy out of the murk.