Regulus & Leo 1 Dwarf Galaxy

[mftoet]

Separated 725,000 light years from each other: the Little King and the Leo 1 Dwarf Galaxy.

Captured from Grandpré (Northern France). Total integration time of 1 hour and 40 minutes. 5 minutes subs @ ISO 400. Takahashi Epsilon-180ED and Nikon D810a.

[Martin Meredith]

Beautiful image, and such a short exposure.  I've looked at the two separately (admittedly using Regulus for alignment...) but never in the same frame (although Regulus's light is never far way).

It must have taken some careful processing I imagine to handle the intensity range in this image and not only get a great texture on Leo 1 but also maintain good colour in the starfield. 

Martin 

[ollypenrice]

This is an imager's image because it is very tricky indeed to get this target to work. Your success is total. It looks entirely natural with the dwarf galaxy looking very delicate. And how good is that focus???

Respect!

Olly

[tomato]

Yes, a masterclass in technique, both at image capture and processing. The clarity and sharpness, revealing the myriad of tiny background galaxies is superb.

[Xiga]

Jaw-dropping. This is a first for me, i've never seen this before. But i can totally see that this is one for the purists indeed! 

I just love the juxtaposition at play here. Bravo! ?

[don4l]

Stunning and beautiful.

 

[mftoet]

Thank you! Don't forget the Epsilon-180ED produces very tiny star images. In the image below I've combined the spot diagrams of the Epsilon-180ED with the FSQ-106 (fluorite version) and scaled them to the equal resolution.

Here's a single frame (300s) straight from the camera without any processing (That is: JPEG preview / gamma stretch in the camera). Focusing was done on the LCD screen of the camera (using a magnifying glass) and a Bahtinov mask in front of the aperture. Post-processing took less than 10 minutes.  

 

[Datalord]

14 hours ago, mftoet said:

Focusing was done on the LCD screen of the camera (using a magnifying glass) and a Bahtinov mask in front of the aperture. Post-processing took less than 10 minutes

This is obscene. Both the astroporn and the simplicity of getting your setup to produce this.

Well done!

[Allinthehead]

A real beauty. I loved how when viewed at full resolution i almost had to squint at the brightness of Regulus, as it should be. We often over suppress our stars and they lose their impact.