Hickson 64 and 67

[Mike JW]

My Hickson journey continues, fascinating tour of the sky.

Hickson 64, located in Virgo
Name		Mag approx	Type	class
PGC  46975	a	15.5	elliptical	SBc
PGC  46972	b	16.7	spiral	Scd
PGC 46977	c	15.6	spiral	Sd
PGC  46971	d	17.8	spiral	SO

C9/Ultrastar at f4.4, 70 x 5sec, 2x2 binning. Image cropped and brightened, adjusted contrast in Photoshop.

 

 

Hickson 67, located in Virgo
Name		Mag approx	Type	class
NGC 5306	a	13.4	elliptical	E1
PGC  49017	b	15	spiral	Sc
PGC 49036	c	15.8	spiral	Scd
PGC  49040	d	15.9	lenticular	SO

C9/ultrastar at f4,4 85 x 5sec subs, 2x2 binning.  Image cropped and brightened, adjusted contrast in Photoshop.

 

Please feel free to suggest improvements to the captures/images - I am not very up on technical stuff but learning.

Mike

[elpajare]

These small and weak objects have always been very interesting for me. And little observed contrary to the classic pieces of astrophotographers. Your result is very good.

I am not a specialist or technician, but my comment would be maybe to get an adequate FOV but without resorting to reducers or BIN. A camera / telescope combination that gives maximum resolution without optical add-ons or software aids.

[Mike JW]

10 minutes ago, elpajare said:

These small and weak objects have always been very interesting for me. And little observed contrary to the classic pieces of astrophotographers. Your result is very good.

I am not a specialist or technician, but my comment would be maybe to get an adequate FOV but without resorting to reducers or BIN. A camera / telescope combination that gives maximum resolution without optical add-ons or software aids.

Appreciate the thoughts. I have gradually come to the conclusion that for Hicksons and probably the Arps I might be best of using the C9 at its native f10 but I increase the time needed to do the capture. I shall have to do some serious thinking and reading around.

Thanks, Mike

[Martin Meredith]

I agree with elpajare, these are very interesting galaxy groups to observe, and your images show the galactic forms very well. I tend to leave in more background, trading a less clean image for the potential of capturing fainter galactic extensions, but it is a matter of preference.

For a CCD sensor like the Ultrastar you might get better results (due to less read overall noise) with longer exposures. I forget what mount you're using and whether you're operating in alt-az or eq, but I find for galaxy work with my 8" f4 scope I prefer to operate at around 30s (but that is in alt-az; for eq I would most likely push this to 60s or more, but for some reason although I have an Eq-Az mount I've only ever used it in alt-az -- one day....).

I'm enjoying seeing your captures. I'm a few Hickson's short of the set but I'm quite poor at record keeping so I'm always forgetting which ones, and then I get distracted by Arps or something else!

Martin