NGC 7479 in LRGB

[cfpendock]

This little jewel is in Pegasus, around 105million light years away.  Lying fairly close to the celestial equator, guiding my deforked CPC1100 at 2800mm focal length was not so easy. 

 

20 x 5 minute subs for luminance, 12 or so each of RGB also at 5 minutes, gives around 4.6 hours total time from last night.  Of course more time would have given less noise and the possibility of pulling out more detail, but this was the first opportunity with clear skies for a long time….

 

Probably a tad over-saturated, but I’m not too unhappy with it.  Lots of other little galaxies in the frame.  Hope the file is not too big - it's an 8 bit PNG.  Comments, criticisms always welcome.

 

Deforked CPC 1100, Temma EM200 mount.

 

Chris

 

[wimvb]

That's an unusual catch. Well done! More data is of course always better, but not always attainable. The only minus with this image would be the large stars, especially the one to the right of the galaxy.

Thanks for sharing

[swag72]

The galaxy itself is looking great! Well done

[cfpendock]

11 hours ago, wimvb said:

The only minus with this image would be the large stars, especially the one to the right of the galaxy.

Thank you very much, Wim.  Of course longer focal lengths do tend to result in larger stars.  But I have reduced the bigger ones as you have suggested, as well as reducing the green slightly which I noticed looked slightly different on this website.   I think it now looks better.  Thanks

Chris

[Tom OD]

Great shot. The second version has better colour I think. 

2.8m guiding with the EM200 is cool. 

Tom

[gnomus]

V2 for me too.  Fantastic image.  Is there a dark line running vertically down the left of the frame?  (Could be my iPad.). If it is there it would be an easy enough fix.

[MrsGnomus]

12 minutes ago, gnomus said:

Is there a dark line running vertically down the left of the frame?  (Could be my iPad.).

It's on my iPad too.

[wimvb]

Much better. As for the vertical line: the easy enough fix would be: cut. There's nothing to keep there anyway.

 

Cheers,

[cfpendock]

Thank you very much for all your replies.  Yes - there is indeed a line running down the side - I wasn't concentrating on that bit of the image!  In fact it is due to stacking different sets of subs - I didn't crop enough off....But thanks for pointing it out - its not so obvious on my screen.

I also notice a purple artefact in the top right right corner which I also did not see before....

Chris

[Barry-Wilson]

V2 wins for me too; a delightful spiral galaxy image.  Super.

[cfpendock]

Thank you very much, Barry.

[ollypenrice]

I, too, love the galaxy. It's odd that SCTs give such indifferent stars - or so it seems. I have yet to run my second hand Meade ACF but its previous owner found this. Great galaxies, poor stars. Well, let's see what happens. Good to see the EM200 can handle it. I have one of those....

This is a darned good image in any event.

Olly

[cfpendock]

15 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Good to see the EM200 can handle it.

Thank you very much Olly.  Yes, The EM200 is pretty bullet proof, although this is about the maximum load (around 15kg) I would like to put on it.  Although it is a few years old, I believe that it has the the bronze gears rather than the plastic ones they used to use.

I have compared images from my Tak FSQ to the SCT, and at the same image scale, the Tak easily outperforms the SCT on the stars.  But just sometimes the longer focal length is useful.  And for visual I would argue the Celestron is hard to beat.

Chris

[PatrickGilliland]

V2 is nice and a pretty little galaxy - nice work.

Paddy

[cfpendock]

Thank you very much, Paddy.