Bode's Nebula

Well, remember Tuesday night's clear skies (of course you do, its such a rare occurance these days, lol)!

Well, like I said on the other thread, I didnt catch comet Catalina as was my intention but I enjoyed an evening of viewing nebulas and galaxies and sharing the views with my b&b hosts and their other customers.   My new favourite object of recent times is Bode's Nebula.  The reason I love it more than before is because it just looks so stunning in my 38mm 70deg eyepiece that I bought earlier in the year on my 8" SCT.  Also of course that added sensation of seeing two galaxies in the one eyepiece and the fact they are 12 million light years away.  Its toppled my previous long reigning favourite M31 Andromeda galaxy.

I am cheating by making it monochrome because it looked positively awful in colour (so much noise).  Also I had to use a lot of gradient tools (overlaying and divide) to get rid of the vignetting that my f6.3 focal reducer produces.  The focal reducer is great, but not for wide field objects like Bodes' Nebula as the Cigar galaxy ends up outside the light concentrated area.  I also had the ISO at 3200 which I know is very high but I didnt really intend to spend much time on it.  I didnt take darks, flats or bias frames either which would have probably improved the noise level during stacking.  I do promise to make a better more dedicated attempt at this next time with longer exposures, darks and flats as I absolutely love these celestial objects and I have to try do them justice to the best of my ability.  Also, I dont think this was suitable for an 8" SCT.  they need more expansive space to breath so I will use my 80mm refractor next time.

Still, I do love seeing those spiral arms on the M81 and the distinct cigar shape and divisions on the M82.

https://flic.kr/p/C6Rnow