NGC 2339 - a small galaxy in Gemini

[wimvb]

NGC 2339 is a small barred spiral galaxy in the Constellation of Gemini. It's about 100 MLy from the solar system and covers only 2.7 x 2 arcminutes of the night sky.

Data from the Liverpool telescope, La Palma.

Although there was enough data for this target, many subs were of poor quality. Only the red channel was abundant.

5 x Bessell-B, 6 x Bessell-V and sdss-g, 23 x sdss-r, and only 3 x Ha

This is a Ha RGB combination.

This galaxy seems to have a very faint outer ring, which in this data, barely makes it above the background.

(Click on the image to get to the full size version)

[celestron8g8]

Very nice Wim .

[gonzostar]

one year i will be getting images like that!  

Dean

[wimvb]

Just now, gonzostar said:

one year i will be getting images like that!  

Dean

Planning on setting up a 2 m RC telescope in your backyard? 

Under 'normal' conditions (pixel scale 1"), this target would only cover some 150 pixels wide. In most images it would turn up as a 'faint fuzzie'.

[gonzostar]

that wou;d be bigger then my house  

[wimvb]

Just now, gonzostar said:

that wou;d be bigger then my house  

That's not the only problem. Where you live, seeing conditions and light pollution would be show stoppers. The camera on this beast has 15 micrometer pixels, but these would fill up with the city lights from Brighton before you catch any photons from a galaxy. Better to leave this scope on its mountain top and download the data. In a sense you paid for it already: it's tax funded.

[gorann]

Well, the backside of the data from this 2 metre wide scope is that they usually take quite few subs, and often end up with less than 1 - 2 hours in total data. So I imagine that if you sell your house in an expensive city and buy one of the largest scopes available to us amateurs, something like a 24 " RC, and spend 24 h or more on an object, you could possibly produce images like this (provided you move to a very dark area). An advantage with our smaller backyard scopes lies in more wide field object and we have time on our side, so we can shoot night after night. It is too many astronomers wanting data from big scopes and imaging time is expensive, so only a few subs are taken of an object now and then. The images that Wim and I have been processing are from a mix of subs taken by numerous astronomers over 2 - 3 years. In other words we are picking up the leftovers and putting them together to make an image.

[gonzostar]

Ok then, back to the bottom of my garden.  content with my scope. Currently taking  5min subs of m94. All going well. even my RMS values are less then 1.  

[Galen Gilmore]

absolutely stunning. I love seeing images of objects I have never even heard of before!