Date: 2/22/2020
Description: The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy distanced 21 million light-years (six megaparsecs) away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain on March 27, 1781, it was communicated to Charles Messier who verified its position for inclusion in the Messier Catalogue as one of its final entries.. [Ref: WikiPedia]
Sky Conditions: Clear skies with some high clouds, FWHM: 3.5 arc sec/pixel
Imaging: Exposure: Color de-bayered 5 hours (55 x 300 sec) at 1x1bin using Celestron LPF
Guiding: AP 80mm guidescope with guide-camera (5sec guide-rate)
Equipment:
ZWO ASI 183 Color Pro -10 deg C
8” RASA at F2
Paramount ME Mount
SW: SkyX, PixIsight - calibration with darks, bias and color correction (weighted batch processing, auto-script merge and noise reduction)
Observatory site : Northern VA