Leo Galaxies

[kyokugaisha]

Finally got enough data to process my first proper galaxy images. My kit is pretty basic - see my signature for the details.

The first are M65 & M66. I tried to get the triplet into the frame but couldn't quite get it lined up properly so have cropped it.

The next is NGC2903.

My biggest concern is that the stars look a little bit and bloated. Is this just bad focusing, processing or just the camera quality? I use a Bahtinov although it is hand made.

Any comments are welcome. Thanks for looking.

[long_arms]

Wow :-)!

I think those are both incredible images regardless of what equipment you used.

I have almost exactly the same equipment as you (without the st-4 mod...thats the plan for my heq5 though).

May I ask what length the exposures were?

Dan

[Gina]

It's a very good start anyway

[kyokugaisha]

Thank you for the comments guys.

Both images were stacked in DSS from about 35 x 300 second subs using flats, darks and bias frames followed by loads of processing in photoshop to eke out the details and remove noise. The guidance system currently isn't normally accurate enough for much more than 5 minute exposures. A decent guide camera is on the shopping list!

[MartinB]

Well done, they are great results with the equipment used. May be a tad off with the focus but I think some of the star bloat is likely to be due to guiding issues.

[sologuitarist61]

What a great set iof images

[andyo]

Nice images

[kyokugaisha]

I think I've managed to get a reasonable result with the NGC3628 data. I've used two sets as the more recent one was right up at the edge of the frame so it's got more noise.

Now to put them all together.

[kyokugaisha]

Et voila.

Far from perfect (can't get rid of the gradient at the top right without the whole thing looking too black) but I'm pretty happy with it.

[tferrari]

Stars appear to be elongated in a single direction - this points to guiding issues.

[kyokugaisha]

In the morning light I think I could do a bit more work on this. Background isn't good enough and I could improve the star trails with some deconvolution.

Oh well back to the drawing board.