Dusted off the camera and got M51,M13 and ngc4565

Hi all,
Was outlast for another session and tried some quick astro-imaging, first time I've done some DSO imaging in atleast 6-7 years if not more.
I've spend the last while getting the polar alignment fairly good and set up the camera to work at F4-5 on my 12" LX200, this gives me 45 arc minute field of views which is much easier to track. These are as much test images then anything else, to see what I can get out of the setup with a little work and see if its worth putting more work into it.....

M13, single 3 minute exposure, it is so so easy to oversharpen this one and make it look fake, over-exposed and un-natural.

farm9.staticflickr.com/8532/8644893189_3c6c7755eb_z.jpg

Ngc4565+ngc4562 , a single 10 minute exposure, this was a very faint one but is a visually impressive edge of spiral, note the second galaxy (smudge) to the lower right

farm9.staticflickr.com/8266/8645996630_883b345500_b.jpg
Believe it or not, this edge on spiral has over 240 globular clusters, imagine the view there, this is one of my favourite galaxies. Messier missed it somehow, its in the Caldwell catalogue as no. 38

M51, Whirlpool galaxy, a single 5 minute exposure,

farm9.staticflickr.com/8536/8644893897_f29e2acf97_z.jpg

M51 could benefit from multiple image stacking to get rid of the noise, infact they all could do with multiple images stacked to bring out more detail. All of these images are heavily cropped so are not the true FOV. I'm probably going to remount the tracking scope on the 12" so I can compensate for tracking errors which are evident in all these images.

I find imaging interesting but very time consuming... the funny thing is that the 2 galaxy images are pretty much how you visually see them through the 20" under a dark adapted darksite sky ....

Nice images Dave. Thanks for sharing

Nice images Dave I have to say while I can appreciate the effort and the outcomes of a processed picture (stacking, flats, subs etc.) I much prefer the "this is what I see through my scope" shots even when its a 20" dob being used as the control point.

thanks for the kind comments guys,
While not on the same level of those with proper CCD cameras, I'm happy enough with the outcome given the equipment and conditions, what I need do now is take as many multiples of these as possible so I can stack them to bring up the brightness. I also took one of M101 which was extremely faint, but you can see the potential detail if I was able to stack a load of them.
There are hours worth of exposures needed for these images..... we'll see how it goes... :bricks:

Thinking about it more, all 3 images are pretty much how I (or anybody else for the matter) would see them through a 20".
From a light polluted site, imaging is the only way of seeing them like this I guess... unless you get one of these
www.ceoptics.com/ccd/i3.html

Hi Dave,
Welcome back to the dark side you have been out of the astrophotography game for a long time now. It’s like riding a bike you will soon get back into the swing of things. The images are very well framed. You know what work the images need any way well done looking forward to seeing some more of your work.