M101 Pinwheel Galaxy

I got some data on the Pinwheel galaxy earlier this year but I wasn't very happy with the result so I didn't publish it.  I decided to take more Ha and Raw data.  I got some about a month ago and just finished processing it.  I am a lot happier with the results and I am amazed at how more data makes a significant difference.  I have about a total of 7 hours of color data and 6 hours of Ha data for this combined RGB and Ha photograph of the Pinwheel galaxy.  The red-pink areas are emission nebula in the galaxy which are areas of star formation.  This week the Pocatello Astronomy group went to the Bruneau state park near Mountain Home, Idaho.  They have a 25inch diameter Newtonian Reflector in a Dobsonian style mount.   It was a fun night of showing a few deep sky objects with a lot of Jupiter and Saturn.  Most of the people there were interested in seeing the planets.  They were amazed to see the rings of Saturn and the bands of Jupiter along with its moons.  The seeing was pretty good after the mirror cooled off.  I was able to see the Casani Division at about 240x.  It was fun to mingle with friends.  Doug and Don were there from the club and Kirk Long that use to attend ISU was there working at the observatory.  The highlight of the night was viewing Pluto from the 25 inch telescope.  Kirk had been tracking it for the last couple of weeks to verify that it was actually Pluto that we were looking at.  It is just a dim looking star around magnitude 14.