NGC1097 in LRGB - 15.67 hrs worth of integration

[AnakChan]

Here's my recent capture taken over a 3 week period, of the NGC1097 barred spiral in Fornax. I live under Bortle 5/6 skies and I normally don't image LRGB so my skills in processing LRGB is also somewhat limited. This image resulted in 15 hrs 40 mins worth of total integration in the following breakdown :-

Lum: 106x 5min
Red: 23x 5min
Green: 25x 5min
Blue: 34x 5min

All taken through the lens of a Takahashi µ250CRS at its native 2500mm F10 by the ZWO ASI6200mm Pro. It was at Bin1x1 with sensor set to -10C, Gain 0 Offset 50. So the resolution was 0.31"/px (probably way oversampled). I used the Antlia Pro LRGB filters.

Aside from experimenting different exposure lengths for wideband filters, I think the biggest challenge I had was processing, and going through different rounds of deconvolution - each time looking horrible. So I gave up decon in the end. One other surprise was that all the RGB channels were quite well balanced to the point that I didn't really need LinearFit - they were really close to each other, which was a nice surprise. Anyhow, I probably could get it a little sharper if I had chosen some nights with better seeing but I'm happy enough (or tired enough) with it.

With the inverted view, you can see the jets emanating from the galaxy core. There's meant to be 4 but I think I've captured only the 2 most prominent ones.

Astrobin: https://astrob.in/sgp4sw/0/
 

Edited November 20, 2021 by AnakChan