Help with identifying what I've imaged. Leo?

[Chimer4]

Hi guys,

I went out last night with the goal of trying to capture the Leo triplet. I don't have a go-to mount and the setting circles on my EQ3 are about as useful as a chocolate teapot, in my experience. I ended up star hopping when I found Leo and pointed my scope in what I thought was the right area and when I saw 3 bright spots on my screen I thought I was in the right area so I started imaging.

I've just done a preliminary stacking and quick stretch to see the data a bit clearer, and I don't think I've captured what I was expecting to when I look at reference images of the triplet. There are 3 larger galaxies and a few smaller smudges which I assume are smaller/more distant galaxies.

For reference this was taken on my A7Rii attached to my Evostar 80ED w/ .85x flattener/corrector and Baader neodymium. Also whilst I'm here, can I ask what might be causing the gradient in the corner? The banding is from my flats, they never seem to come out flat.

[vlaiv]

You are slightly off...

[Chimer4]

Ah right, I see where I've gone wrong now I think. I think I fat fingered m66 and ended up entering m96 which put me in that region, and I didn't get a perfect alignment.

Thanks for helping me figure out out

[vlaiv]

3 minutes ago, Chimer4 said:

Ah right, I see where I've gone wrong now I think. I think I fat fingered m66 and ended up entering m96 which put me in that region, and I didn't get a perfect alignment.

Thanks for helping me figure out out

For future reference - you can upload your image to nova.astrometry.net and get it plate solved - it will detect objects in the image and annotate it.

[Chimer4]

That's great, thank you for that!