M109 and NGC3953 - odd framing of distant neighbors

[gorann]

I continue my refractor galaxy hunt, and YES I know, the framing is quite odd. But what else could I do when I got the idea in my head of getting these two galaxies into the same field of view.

Caught the photons with my Esprit 150 and ASI 071 MC (OSC) last night. I managed to grab 5 out of 5.5 hours of astrodarkness (lost half an hour to the flip including PHD2 recalibration). Still, the sky was very dark at midnight (SQM = 21.6 which is as dark as it gets here) and seeing was relatively good so I could get guiding down to 0.6 - 0.8 " (RMS) with the Mesu 200.

60 x 5 min at gain 200 (offset 30, -15°C)

 

[alan potts]

Don't feel you should be so hard on yourself, I personally rather like and they are in the same frame. Considering they are are opposite sides of the diagonal they are still very sharp with nice detailing.

Alan

[gorann]

1 minute ago, alan potts said:

Don't feel you should be so hard on yourself, I personally rather like and they are in the same frame. Considering they are are opposite sides of the diagonal they are still very sharp with nice detailing.

Alan

Thanks Alan! Yes, I assume I can claim that it is really not my fault that they are so far apart?, and it is nice with a scope (with dedicated flattener) that gives sharp views all the way to the corners.

[Laurin Dave]

Very nice Goran..   you need a bigger sensor!  If you need to re-calibrate PHD2 after flip then maybe some settings are wrong, mine did that till I unchecked the two "reverse guide mode" tick boxes in Sitech..  I have "reverse Dec after flip" checked in PHD2 guiding tab only and it works fine.

 

Dave

[gorann]

19 minutes ago, Laurin Dave said:

Very nice Goran..   you need a bigger sensor!  If you need to re-calibrate PHD2 after flip then maybe some settings are wrong, mine did that till I unchecked the two "reverse guide mode" tick boxes in Sitech..  I have "reverse Dec after flip" checked in PHD2 guiding tab only and it works fine.

 

Dave

Thanks Dave!

I am sure you are right about PHD2. I re-calibrated it to be on the safe side. I should try ticking that box instead! Thanks for that.

By the way, the other night I wanted to go to bed so I flipped the scope about an hour before it was time to do it. Sitech did the flip but then it stopped tracking even if I moved the object in sight (using Cartes du Ciel). So it seems like I can continue tracking long after I passed the meridian but not before. Have you had this experience with the Mesu/Sitech?

[Laurin Dave]

Hi Goran.. I've not tried that so can't say,  mine is connected/configured with SGPro to flip 20mins after the meridian.  I did have problems with it initially when after a manual flip post meridian I'd do a manual plate solve and centre and it would flip back ..  which was most annoying.  All sorted now although more by luck than judgement!

Dave

[gorann]

This made me feel good about the image: I did an annotation in PI and found that there are more than 50 galaxies (lost count) between the two big (=closer) ones. And I can see even more....

[gorann]

Made a crop and blow up to bring the neighbors closer together

[tooth_dr]

12 minutes ago, gorann said:

Made a crop and blow up to bring the neighbors closer together

Super job there! What a lovely lovely pair of galaxies. 

[gorann]

3 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Super job there! What a lovely lovely pair of galaxies. 

Thanks a lot!

[wimvb]

On 09/04/2019 at 20:37, gorann said:

This made me feel good about the image: I did an annotation in PI and found that there are more than 50 galaxies (lost count) between the two big (=closer) ones. And I can see even more....

Very nice wide field image. Did you know that the annotation tool ( or was it the image solver? I forgot) can create a text file with all the objects in the image? It will be easier counting all those fuzzies.

[Xplode]

Nice image Göran!
There's way more than 50 galaxies in the background, i guess at least 500 and probably a few thousand more just out of reach for this image, they usually only show up when using good luminance data.
I guess there's 50+ galaxies just in this small crop, they are so far away they are turning yellow from the redshift, there seems to be a barely visible galaxy cluster in the middle.

[gorann]

4 hours ago, wimvb said:

Very nice wide field image. Did you know that the annotation tool ( or was it the image solver? I forgot) can create a text file with all the objects in the image? It will be easier counting all those fuzzies.

Thanks Wim! Will make a list next time, thanks for the tip.

[gorann]

11 hours ago, Xplode said:

Nice image Göran!
There's way more than 50 galaxies in the background, i guess at least 500 and probably a few thousand more just out of reach for this image, they usually only show up when using good luminance data.
I guess there's 50+ galaxies just in this small crop, they are so far away they are turning yellow from the redshift, there seems to be a barely visible galaxy cluster in the middle.

Thanks Ole Alexander! Yes, there are loads of them. The camera I used for this image is a OSC (ASI071), so no lum, but it still picked upp quite a bit of the faint fuzzies.