NGC 3718 - a sweet wrapper in the sky!

[ShineOn]

Another dual rig effort from last week.  The main feature here is NGC 3718, a warped spiral galaxy in Ursa Major.  It’s ‘sweetie wrapper’ appearance is thought to derive from ongoing interactions with the spiral galaxy NGC 3729, lower left.  This pair are a mere 150,000 light years apart.  Also of note is the small cluster of galaxies shown centre right.  This group is named Hickson 56 and the central three appear to be in contact and interacting.  They are estimated to be around 425 million light years distant.  The universe is big!

Full image details:

RGB – 47 x 3mins using MN190 / ZWO ASI 2600MC

Luminance – 35 x 5 mins using Tak 85 @ f5.3 / Atik 460ex

Total image time: 5h 16

Guided with ZWO ASI 224 MC / phd2

Data captured with Sequence Generator Pro

Stacked with DSS

Data sets aligned with Registar

Processed with PS CS5

[MarkAR]

Lovely image.

[Wyvernp]

Wow, that is really lovely. May I ask what focal length this was taken at?

[ShineOn]

6 minutes ago, Wyvernp said:

Wow, that is really lovely. May I ask what focal length this was taken at?

Thank you!  The RGB was taken with the Skywatcher MN190 at a focal length of 1000mm and the luminance with Takahashi FSQ 85 at a native f5.3, giving 450mm focal length.  Using the ASI 2600MC on the MN190 and the Atik 460 on the Tak I can achieve a similar field of view in terms of scale but at the moment I am not aligned too well.  I have a JTD tilt adjuster on order from FLO to correct this 🙂 I've attached 100% crops (single slightly streched subs) of how the RGB and Lum shots currently look off the camera