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Galaxies in Leo


jjosefsen

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Galaxies in Leo
 
Hickson 44 is a group of interacting galaxies in the constellation Leo, also designated as Arp 316 in The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.
 
LRGB_Final_Small_Web.thumb.jpg.3ff31f4fd4c4f2f397093af90de92772.jpg
 
Inverted crop of luminance:
Lum_Invert.thumb.jpg.f9aef3a60637ab2242d86ce8db1021ce.jpg
 
Equipment used:
Altair Astro Hypercam 183v2 mono
EQ6
Skywatcher ED80
N.I.N.A. used for capture and control, calibrated and stacked in Astro Pixel Processor, post processing in PixInsight with final color tweaks and watermark in Photoshop.
 
NGC 3190 is the nearly edge on spiral galaxy in the center of the image, with the very prominent dustlane. Lower to the right is NGC 3187 a barred spiral galaxy. Above we find the hazy eliptical galaxy NGC 3193.
 
NGC 3185 to the lower left is not a part of the Hickson 44 group, but is another lovely barred spiral galaxy.
 
The distance to Hickson 44 is approximately 80 million lightyears.
 
Total integration time is around 9 hours in a bit of a mixed bag of subs.
100 minutes of luminance.
153 minutes of Red.
150 minutes of Green.
141 minutes of Blue.
 
I made a synthetic luminance by stacking all lum, red, green and blue subs for a total luminance stack of roughly 9 hours, but it stands to reason that the contribution of the RGB only equates to a little under 3 hours of luminance.
I am experimenting with just shooting RGB and combining it as a synthetic luminance, it is probably faster to get real luminance in the end. But shooting this much RGB compared to what I normally do, made it a little easier to process I think.
 
More details and a full resolution version here:
 
Question:
I am getting quite a bit of split color stars, I am assuming this is to do with the less than perfect correction of my optics?
 
Comments and criticism is always welcome!
Edited by jjosefsen
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1 hour ago, happy-kat said:

What a busy area, enjoyable to see.

I've not found recent nights very stable and a bit wet hazy maybe this exaggerated the star bloom. 

Yeah - In general I have very high humidity maybe because I am near the sea, I don't know.

A weak point in my processing is and has always been getting nice stars, I can control the stars cores reasonably well now I think, but the halo's always present a problem..

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1 hour ago, tooth_dr said:

Very very nice. You really need to click on the full version to see how much colour and detail are in the galaxies. 

Thanks!

Does it maybe have a bit too much green?

 

I broke my own rule of posting about an image immediately after having processed it. Usually I like to come back to it the next day with fresh eyes..

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3 hours ago, jjosefsen said:

Thanks!

Does it maybe have a bit too much green?

 

I broke my own rule of posting about an image immediately after having processed it. Usually I like to come back to it the next day with fresh eyes..

LOL, no I actually think it looks great (on my work monitor).

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22 minutes ago, Jedi2014 said:

Very nice field. I like this group very much. You did a great job with details and colors. If critisism is allowed, some stars are too blue in my eyes.

Cheers Jens

I think you are right.. almost purple in hue. I wonder if it happens because I tuned out some magente fringes on some stars.

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