NGC5317 and friends

[petevasey]

As we are only too well aware the last few days have seen a blast of Arctic air which brought some clear skies. The night of 5th April started off with excellent conditions, unfortunately shortly after 1am on 6th clouds moved down from the North ending my imaging run (see satellite images below, remember I live in NE England). It would seem that the clouds did not affect the South of England until the night was over so anyone there would have had a good session. Lucky you, but Sod's law for me!

Fortunately the next night (6th April) was again forecast to be clear, and this time stayed that way and I was able to return to the previous night's target of NGC 5317 and associated galaxies in Virgo. Some thin cloud part way through the night caused the scrapping of several sub frames, nevertheless I collected enough altogether to produce a satisfactory image. QSI 683 camera with Starlight Xpress AO unit on RC10. Luminance 16 x 10 minutes, RGB each 8 x 10 minutes, all binned 2x2.

A nice range of galaxy types. Clockwise from top right the individual galaxies are:

NGC 5356 mag 13.0, NGC 5350 mag 13.6, NGC 5317 mag 10.4, NGC 5363 mag 10.5. North is approximately up.

Cheers,

Peter

 

 

 

 

Edited April 7, 2021 by petevasey
Improved image