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NGC7331 and Stephan's Quintet.

ollypenrice

By ollypenrice
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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It's been a quiet new moon, imaging-wise, here since we had an enoyable week with visual guests last week.

So... back at the cameras, two nights on this one, 4 hours lum and 4 hours colour. Atik 460/TEC140/Mesu 200.

When working on the L layer I was disgruntled by a not very flat background, till I woke up and realized that there is IFN in this part of the sky.  It's very faint and hardly shows in this version because I decided to prioritize small stars and small stars with flux would take some doing. I'd also need a lot more L data. (While the 460 is sensitive to faint nebulosity it is not very good at collecting a very constant signal from the background sky. I normally just squeeze the histogram to fix the background but this would kill the IFN so if we do go for an IFN version we'll need an awful lot of signal.

NGC7331%20Quintet%208Hrs%20TEC140%20Web-

We could juuuuuuust see the Quintet in the 14 inch SCT.

Olly

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swag72

swag72

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I like this - The framing really is excellent. For me this is the icing on the cake. It's easier to put the main image in the middle of the chip than look around and actually plan how your are going to frame it to it's best advantage.... very nice indeed Olly :) 

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gnomus

gnomus

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Beautiful colours and a clean image.  Far be it from me to offer any sort of critique, but I am not sure I agree with Sara about the composition.  To me the objects are a little too far into the corners.  I wonder if it would be better if there was a bit more background sky to each side - something like a 'widescreen' presentation - you often see M81/82 presented this way and I think that works quite well for those pair of objects.  (I'd then feel inclined to rotate it 180 so that the larger object was lower left.)  The widescreen idea would mean a mosaic of course (or the bigger chip, cropped).  Again, I have no idea what I am doing offering this view - please forgive me... old age and all.  Where did my medication get to?  ...

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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I think the frame should ideally have gone a tad to the right (objects moving left) but time was pressing and we needed the diagonal to get 7331 in with the Quintet. To get more sky we'd need to mosaic. 

I wonder if there's any useful Ha at this resolution? Only one way to find out!

Olly

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wimvb

wimvb

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Great image. But I agree with @gnomus on the framing. The rule of 1/3 has its merits. But I wonder, if the frame had been more to the left and the bottom cropped, pushing the quintet into the corner while putting 7331 on the intersection of thirds...

Steve, I think I found your medication under my walker. :grin:

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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17 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Great image. But I agree with @gnomus on the framing. The rule of 1/3 has its merits. But I wonder, if the frame had been more to the left and the bottom cropped, pushing the quintet into the corner while putting 7331 on the intersection of thirds...

Steve, I think I found your medication under my walker. :grin:

My medicine is always kept in the same place - in a whisky bottle.

Olly

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gorann

gorann

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Excellent Olly! I like everything about this image. Have never seen these galaxies together like this before, so I find it not only beautiful but also very inventive. As you say framing could be a tad to the right maybe, but after a bit of medicine (whiskey) who cares.... (with enough medicine on-board maybe you could clone-stamp in some sky :icon_biggrin:).

I am sure you have inspired many of us to have a go at the same targets.

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Anne S

Anne S

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I'm planning to try Stephan's Quintet once I get my RC6 up and running. (And any clear skies) If I get anywhere as good as yours I'll be very happy. I'll be using my SX694. How long were your subs?

Anne

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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29 minutes ago, Anne S said:

I'm planning to try Stephan's Quintet once I get my RC6 up and running. (And any clear skies) If I get anywhere as good as yours I'll be very happy. I'll be using my SX694. How long were your subs?

Anne

Hi Anne,

Fifteen minutes for luminance and ten for colour. If I go for an 'IFN' version I'll probably use longer subs for L.

The real fight in this processing job was to keep the stars small. I normally do a soft stretch for the stars and a hard for the galaxies and layer them together, but with this camera the weak signal for the background sky means that even the soft stretch, made with a custom curve, has quite large stars. I was reduced to Photoshop in blunt instrument mode for these stars!

Olly

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