This evening I decided to have a go at imaging M101 The Pinwheel Galaxy in Ursa Major. I was keen to see the difference between my DSLR image and that with a CCD camera. I managed 24x5 min luminence data with 6x5min each for RGB. Total exposure time was 3.5 hours. The mount tracked perfectly as usual. Unfortunately the green and blue images weren't tightly focussed even through I had moved the focuser to the xpected focal point. Considering the speed at whivh @focus works, I will just run this between filter changes in future.

I processed the data a couple of days later. I was disappointed with the result, mainly due to the fact that I had to remove a significant light pollution gradient which had a detrimental effect on the colour balance. In addition, I didn't seem to pick up as much detail as I was expecting. The sky wasn't great on the imaging night though and the Pinwheel can be a trickly target.

Anyway, seeing as the clocks have now gone forward it's going to be difficult to get the hours in, but I'll keep going!