M101

Weather has been dire lately but managed to get out on Sat and have another go at M101. A full moon is not a good time to do this one but my modded cannon 350D gave me a bit more detail on the core. Will have to come back to this again when its dark clear night.

M101 is in Ursa Major its hard to spot with a telescope so I use my camera to find it by taking a 30 second shot while the telescope and camera are pointing in the general area. This works very well and I can now find it pretty quickly.

Here is a cropped version of the above image to bring up a bit more detail still not happy with the focus and details yet but a nice clear dark night should sort this out. M101 is in a good postion right now for me as its normally right above the street lights in my area. They all go off at midnight so its worth waiting for a clear night in March after midnight. Astronomers dont sleep much on clear nights.