The Whirlpool Galaxy is no doubt one of the most beautiful and amazing accessible targets in the night sky, and I absolutely love imaging it. It's one of those targets that you go "really? I can get an image like that from my urban backyard?" At 31 million light years away, with its perfect spiral arms, and side-kick M51b (a dwarf galaxy that is interacting with the larger M51), it provides a visually stunning duet. Despite imaging this in near Bortle 9 conditions of the SouthBay of LA County, I was really happy with the the level of detail in the image - visible dust filaments in the arms, and even some small highlighted Hydrogen Alpha (reddish) regions even although I was imaging in broadband, and did not attempt a composite (maybe next year).

This same amazing target happened to be my first blog post over a year and a half ago. That post was a testament to the countless challenges we face in astrophotography. The resulting image in that post was a dumbed down shell of what it could have been, due to an enigmatic sensor dew issue, caused by saturation of the desiccant tabs in the astrophotography camera....since it is is cooled to subzero temperatures during imaging, causing condensation if any moisture has permeated the o-ring sealing the sensor cavity. That issue only showed in the post production, so my 15 hours of imaging (or so), and hours of post processing, went mostly to waste (although I learned from the experience about replacing sensor desiccant tabs, and storing camera in desiccated cases). I've been wanting to revisit M51 since that "learning" episode. This time around, over a year and a half later, there were still plenty of (new) challenges. As an analogy, when you flip life's "filter" selectors for "no clouds, don't have to work late, not sick, no moon pollution, sufficiently good seeing near the coast"......the list of available astrophotography nights gets pretty darn short, especially in a Pacific El Nino year. Add to that a bug in the auto guiding SW (thankfully rectified by the developers over the course of month, after a few of us raised the issue).....and it took a long while to get this image.

For those interested, the technical stats are as follows: ~13 hrs of 120 second exposures over 2 nights, L-Pro broadband light pollution filter, Celestron 8" aperture Schmidt-Cassegrain (SCT) telescope using an Off-Axis guider and F/.63 focal reducer at 1280mm Focal Length, ASI294MC primary imaging camera cooled to -10C, 130 Gain, Skywatcher EQ6-R equatorial mount, and 30 each of dark, flat illumination field, and bias calibration frames, Bortle 8-9 skies.