M97 – The Owl Nebula in Ursa Major

M97 – The Owl Nebula in Ursa Major

Telescope: Meade 12” LX850 ACF @ f/8, Orion Atlas EQ-G

Camera: ZWO ASI071 MC Pro, -10C, Gain 200

Filter: Orion Imaging Skyglow Filter

Guide scope: Astro-Tech 60mm, ASI290MM Mini, PHD2

Exposure: 47x240sec, saved as FITS

Darks: 32x240s, saved as FITS

Flats: 32x1sec, Tee shirt flats taken at dawn

Average Light Pollution: Red zone, Bortle 8, fair transparency

Lensed Sky Quality Meter: 18.6 mag/arc-sec^2

Stacking: Mean with a 2-sigma clip.

White Balance: Nebulosity Automatic

Software: Nebulosity, Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop

This is the 3^rd of 4 first-light image taken with my new to me Meade 12” f/8 ACF from LX850 production. The sky conditions weren’t the best with only fair transparency after being poor earlier, poor seeing, and a bit of a breeze, but I wanted to assess how well my Atlas would carry this scope and how well it would guide. To keep the weight down I removed the Starlock mount from the telescope and mounted a 50mm Orion mini guider under the Losmandy rail. However, the guiding seemed to be struggling a bit, so I replaced the 50mm mini with an Astro-Tech 60mm guidescope. I found out later that this whacked the balance of the scope in both RA and dec, but it still guided fairly well. There’s a few issues with the star shapes in this image, but follow-on testing with the telescope properly balanced was excellent. Soooo, although it pushes the Atlas to its limits, this combination seems to work quite well.

M97 is a wonderful little planetary located just below the bowl of the Big Dipper. It is easy to locate, but a challenge to see from my light polluted backyard. If you look closely there are tiny galaxies scattered across the field. For example, to the lower left of the nebula is PGC 34279 (Mv 16.0) and above the nebula are PGC 2490291 (Mv 17.6) and 2490640 (Mv 17.3).