NGC-891

NGC 891 (also known as Caldwell 23) is an edge-on unbarred spiral galaxy about 30 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. It was discovered by William Herschel on October 6, 1784. The galaxy is a member of the NGC 1023 group of galaxies in the Local Supercluster. It has an H II nucleus. (wikipedia)

Here's only color channels binned 2*2. This was a morning target for few of my imaging sessions so there's no luminance channel, yet. If the weather some day clears I've planned to continue with this one.

Only 2 hr 12 min of rgb here (42:60:30 bin2*2 all).

Draco Trio reprocessed

More reprocessing done!

Here's another one shot in 2013, original post and image can be found here.

Full size on Astrobin

Ngc2685 reprocessed

Had some time to get back to reprocess one of my old images. This was shot in early 2013. (original post here.)

And 100% crop of the galaxy:

Full size on Astrobin

IC356

This was my early-night target before Ngc3184. Unfortunately this drops low pretty fast after darkness so I got only 2-3 hrs of data during a night. And there was only two clear nights...

This galaxy is a relatively nearby, located only 39 million light years away. It's located quite close to IC342 in the constellation Camelopardalis. IC356, also known as Arp213, has a magnitude of 11.39.

Here's 5h 30min of exposure. 

L             = 16 * 900" (bin1*1)

RGB       =  6 * 300" (bin2*2)

Full size in Astrobin.

Ngc3184

At least one image for this season done!!!!

I missed almost two weeks of clear weather mainly because I noticed a minor flexure on my PDF focuser and wanted to fix it right away. Waited to got a longer extension plate to get camera closer to focuser. And I think it helped a bit because I didn't notice any flexure this time.

Here's the Ngc3184, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. It lies about 40 million light years away and has a magnitude of 10.4.

In the down right part of the image is galaxy cluster Abell 971.

Total exposure is 6 h 40 min.

                              L = 17*900"

                              R = 12*300" (bin2*2)

                              G = 9 *300" (bin2*2)

                              B = 10*300" (bin2*2)

Full size in Astrobin

Old images reprocessed; M31, M65&M66 and M101

Had some time to study PI and try to reprocess some old ones...

Here's The Andromeda Galaxy, M31. (original post from 2009 here)

Then M65&M66 (original here, from 2010)

And finally M101, The Pinwheel Galaxy (original here, from 2010)

Full size images in Astrobin.

NGC6745

Final image for this season.

"NGC 6745 (also known as UGC 11391) is an irregular galaxy about 206 million light-years (63.5 mega-parsecs) away in the constellation Lyra. It is actually a triplet of galaxies in the process of colliding.

The three galaxies have been colliding for hundreds of millions of years. After passing through the larger galaxy (NGC 6745A), the smaller one (NGC 6745B) is now moving away. The larger galaxy was probably a spiral galaxy before the collision, but was damaged and now appears peculiar. It is unlikely that any stars in the two galaxies collided directly because of the vast distances between them. The gas, dust, and ambient magnetic fields of the galaxies, however, do interact directly in a collision. As a result of this interaction, the smaller galaxy has probably lost most of its interstellar medium to the larger one.

The age of NGC 6745 is estimated to be ~10 Myr." (wikipedia)

This tiny galaxy has a size of 1,3 arcsec and a magnitude of 13,9.

Total exposure of this is 7h 30min.
                                 L = 22 * 900"
                                 R = 8 * 300"
                                 G = 9 * 300"
                                 B = 5 * 450"

Full size on Astrobin

Arp188 Tadpole Galaxy with 14"

One of the few images for this Spring...

Another shot of this small galaxy. Seeing wasn't too good so I'm not quite happy with this one. Actually the Luminosity channel was better for my 8" SCT taken few years ago. But there was also 3 times more light than this one...

Total exposure was 7h 7,5min
                        RG    =  10*300" (bin2)
                        B       = 9*450" (bin2)
                        L       = 13*1200" (bin1)

Full size on Astrobin

NGC4214

Finally after a long break (mainly because of awful weather...) I got some imaging done!

I continued with this nice barred irregular galaxy.

I had 1h 20min of Luminosity exposures for a year ago and took now 4hrs more, but here's still only 1h 20 of Luminance... Seeing has been so ridiculous that the FWHM was now 4-5.3. Older images has FWHM of 2.6-3 so there was no use for them.

RGB is about 30 min each so that's not enough either but no can do.

Total exposure is only 3 hrs:

                            L = 4*1200"

                            RGB = 5*300/6*300/6*450"

Full size on Astrobin

Draco Dwarf finalized

I took some more shots for this faint one...

Total exposure is 11h 20min (485:60:60:75)
                        L        = 3*1800" + 10*1200" +  13*900" (bin 1*1)
                        RG     = 12*300" (bin2*2)
                        B        = 15*300" (bin2*2)

Full size on Astrobin

The Draco Dwarf galaxy, UGC10822

After I got my ServoCAT back I imaged this galaxy from our local group. Even though the magnitude of this is 10.9 the surface brightness is very low and I didn't manage to get the halo of the galaxy out. The moisture in the air (and the surface fog) didn't help at all...

"Recent studies have indicated that the galaxy may potentially hold large amounts of dark matter. Having an absolute magnitude of -8.6[c] and a total luminosity of only 2×10⁵ L☉, it is one of the faintest companions to our Milky Way." (wikipedia)

Total exposure of this image is 8h 35min:
                                 L          =         6h 35min
                                 RGB     =        2h (40:40:40)

Full size on Astrobin

NGC4214, short exposure (L only)

This nice galaxy remains on my target list! 

I got only 4*20min of exposure before astronomical darkness ended here. Not too much processing used here... Hopefully next season let's me finalize this one.

NGC2685 reprocessed

As I said I wasn't too happy with the star colors of the first post so here's new version of this polar ring galaxy.

M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy

I took few images during near full moon (90+ percent) of this famous galaxy. I didn't had any big expectations of the result because of the moon phase and short exposure time. But the final image surprised me!

Here's only 2h 50min of exposure:
                                             L        =   4 * 1200"
                                             RG     =   3 * 300"
                                             B        =   6 * 300"
                                             Ha      =   3 * 600"

Draco trio reprocessed

I've done some reprocessing of the picture to bring out more of the ngc5982's (elliptical galaxy) outer parts.

I used J-P Metsävainio's (http://astroanarchy.blogspot.fi/) brilliant tonemapping method. I've never used it before to LRGB-imaging but it seems to work perfectly.

Here's a "boosted" version of the Draco trio:

Draco Trio; NGC5981, NGC5982 and NGC5985

This is a fascinating view of three totally different galaxies. From top to bottom there's a face-on spiral NGC5985, an elliptical NGC5982 and a edge-on NGC5981. And in the background there's dozens of faint galaxies.

While the group is far too small to be a galaxy cluster and has not been cataloged compact group, these galaxies all do lie roughly 100 million light-years from planet Earth. On close examination with spectrographs, the bright core of the striking face-on spiral NGC 5985 shows prominent emission in specific wavelengths of light, prompting astronomers to classify it as a Seyfert, a type of active galaxy.

NGC5985 has a size of 3*5.5 arcmin (mag 11.1), NGC5982 has a size of 2.6*1.9 arcmin (mag 11) and NGC5981 has a size of 0.3*2.8 arcmin (mag 13.89).

Exposure of this image is:
                                      L              =  14*1200"
                                      RGB         =    8*300" (bin2*2)
                                      TOTAL    = 6h 40min

Full size again on Astrobin

Polar ring galaxy NGC2685 Finalized

A polar-ring galaxy is a type of galaxy in which an outer ring of gas and stars rotates over the poles of the galaxy. These polar rings are thought to form when two galaxies gravitationally interact with each other. One possibility is that a material is tidally stripped from a passing galaxy to produce the polar ring seen in the polar-ring galaxy. The other possibility is that a smaller galaxy collides orthogonally with the plane of rotation of the larger galaxy, with the smaller galaxy effectively forming the polar-ring structure. (wikipedia)

This is my version of this mag 11.2 object (4.6*2.5 arcmin)

I'm not totally happy with the colors (or lack of them) so I may reprocess this later.

Total exposure is 10h 40min:
                                              L    = 25*1200"
                                              RG = 8*300"
                                              B    = 8*450"

And here's 100% crop of the galaxy.

Bigger one again in Astrobin

NGC2403 L(HaR)GB

NGC 2403 (also Caldwell 7) is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis. NGC 2403 is an outlying member of the M81 Group, and is approximately 8 million light-years distant. It bears a striking similarity to M33, being about 50,000 light years in diameter and containing numerous star-forming H II regions. The northern spiral arm connects it to nearby galaxy NGC 2404. (wikipedia)

Galaxy has a size of 21.9*12.3 arcmin and magnitude of 8.9.

Total exposure is 7h 15min:
                      L    =   13*1200"
                      GB =   8*300"
                      R    =   7*300"
                      Ha  =   3*1200"

IC342, The Hidden Galaxy L(HaR)GB

IC 342 (also known as Caldwell 5) is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis. The galaxy is near the galactic equator where dust obscuration makes it a difficult object for both amateur and professional astronomers to observe, though it can readily be detected even with binoculars. The dust of the Milky Way makes it difficult to determine the precise distance; modern estimates range from about 7 Mly to about 11 Mly.

IC 342 is one of the brightest two galaxies in the IC 342/Maffei Group of galaxies, one of the galaxy groups that is closest to the Local Group. The galaxy was discovered by William Frederick Denning in 1895. Edwin Hubble first thought it to be in the Local Group, but later it was demonstrated that the galaxy is outside the Local Group. (wikipedia)

This galaxy has a size of 21.4*20.9 arcmin with a magnitude of 9.1.

Here's my finalized version of it.

Total exposure: 8h 10 min
                          L   = 4h20min (13 * 1200")
                          Ha = 2h (6*1200")
                          RG = 30 min (6*300")
                          B   = 50 min (10*300")

NGC2685

And one more project to continue, Polar ring galaxy NGC2685.