NGC772 galaxy and a visitor

[lukebl]

Hi all,

This is a capture from last night (whilst watching Stargazing Live!) of the really nice galaxy NGC772 and its companions in Aries. It's made from 38 x 5 minute Luminance subs captured with an SXVF-H9 and my 250mm f/4.7 Newtonian. To get a bit of colour, I captured 10 x 5 minute subs with my canon 450d and, although the colour is pretty subtle, I think that using the rough Canon images has improved its appearance without needing to wait another night for some RGB.

What it doesn't show is the 13th magnitude asteroid 735 Marghanna which was passing through the galaxy, which I noticed yesterday whilst browsing Carte du Ciel. The DSS stacking process eliminates the asteroid as it is in a different position in each frame, so here's 7 unprocessed frames at 30-minute intervals roughly superimposed to show its movement.

And here's an animation of its movement over three hours. To do the animation I had to adjust the position of each frame so that they lined up, which showed me that I had have awful field rotation. That, and the poor star shapes makes me realise that I really must check my polar alignment.

[RogerTheDodger]

Awesome capture, thanks for sharing it Luke

[Trevor N]

Excellent images Luke. Fine detail. Trevor

[Spikey]

Really good stuff Luke - love the animation.

[RobH]

Lovely galaxy image, and nice asteroid capture.

Grabbing RGB with an OSC camera and adding to luminance from a mono can work very well, and save a lot of time as you noticed!

[kenmyers]

I love the dark pitch black swirls around the outside of the galaxy

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great stuff!

[Jessun]

What a successful session! Interesting 'visitor' too!

[lukebl]

Thanks a lot guys. I think this is my best CCD galaxy image yet, in terms of processing, so I think I must be learning something!

[mdstuart]

Lovely image...but why is the galaxy so distorted in shape with no other galaxy nearby I am asking myself???

Mark

[MartinB]

Lovely shot and the colour has worked very well

[lukebl]

Lovely image...but why is the galaxy so distorted in shape with no other galaxy nearby I am asking myself???

Mark

Thank again gents. Apparently the distortion is due to the interaction with its companion galaxies, like NGC770, PGC212884 and PGC7509 to the left of the galaxy in this image.

[Shibby]

Lovely image, and what a bonus!

[Zul]

Amazing image!

[Beyond_Vision]

Really well taken and processed I bet you are pleased with that. The animation is a real bonus too

Regards

Kevin

[astro mick]

Cracking image Luke.Really exerllent.

Mick.