Pinwheel Galaxy (m33)

I finally got my telescope and 5DII to a dark site. Saturday I went camping with my 7-year-old daughter at Observatory Campground near Palomar Observatory. She fell asleep around 10pm, leaving me a couple of hours till moonrise, and the large galaxy m33 was well placed. I think it turned out better than what I was getting from my back yard.


The mach 1 mount was tracking so well no guiding was needed. It was pretty much just point and shoot :)


[img]/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.00.25.93/m33-narrow.jpg[/img]





m33, 5DII with AP130EDFGT (819mm f/6.3)


iso 1600, 8 exposures of 8 min each stacked with deep sky stacker


A higher resolution version is here. Click the magnifying class in the upper right to see full resolution.

Very cool!


Kind of makes you realize just how small we really are in the big scheme of things..

Now that is awesome!

Wow... amazing!

That is awesome!


Well done, Jon.

Wow!

Super shot! You've got to show us more when you get a chance to take some more.

Thanks for the comments. I'm really happy with the performance of the 5DII in this context. Most people use cooled ccds to reduce thermal noise, but the 5DII long exposure noise reduction (which I used) seems to work pretty well.

Really amazing image...

Thanks! :)