M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy - My first posted image of this beautiful galaxy. (Phil Hoppes)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: HD117815 · IC 4263 · IC 4277 · IC 4278 · M 51 · NGC 5194 · NGC 5195 · NGC 5198 · Whirlpool Galaxy

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M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy - My first posted image of this beautiful galaxy.

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M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy - My first posted image of this beautiful galaxy.

This is my first real attempt at capturing M51. I have made some preliminary sessions on the galaxy in the past few months but they were only a few frames in passing. I had a nice clear night last night and I was able to capture 110 x 300" subs. I tried something new and I use APP to help screen my initial frames in addition to my usual "blink" exercise in PI. This was quite helpful actually because the Quality Rating system in APP is pretty good. I was able to quickly ascertain which subs would be the best and discard those that did not measure up. From the 110 initially captured I ended up with 93 for my final stack and process. For grins I processed the whole stack through with APP and did a parallel stack with PI. After stacking I processed both in PI to clean up and then a tad more to polish up in Photoshop. My main image is from processing M51 all the way through with PI. The shot below is the version stacked with APP and then post in PI. My take is there is a tad more contrast in the spiral arms in the APP version but more nebulous detail in the PI version. More than likely my inexperience in using APP might be the difference but as just a screening tool, APP works quite nice. I'm also finding APP is a very nice and quick way for stacking my Seestar images.

Enjoy!

Imaged with N.I.N.A.
Narrowband imaging
Vixen Astrophotography
Arizona Astrophotographers

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9424839
PixInsight job	EIXFUEZFJXK3K8RCEBX7SL6AJ7XFK8ZD
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h29m54s.11
RA (top/left)	13h33m33s.69
RA (top/right)	13h30m46s.94
RA (bottom/right)	13h26m11s.15
RA (bottom/left)	13h29m02s.63

Dec (center)	+47°11′04″.9
Dec (top/left)	+46°46′32″.10
Dec (top/right)	+47°54′56″.6
Dec (bottom/right)	+47°35′10″.4
Dec (bottom/left)	+46°27′10″.4

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M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy - My first posted image of this beautiful galaxy.

M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy - My first posted image of this beautiful galaxy.

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M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy - My first posted image of this beautiful galaxy.

M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy - My first posted image of this beautiful galaxy.

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