ngc3359 and its companion, the Little Cub, revisited

[wimvb]

In March I tried to image the compact blue galaxy Little Cub in the constellation Ursa Major (Great Bear, hence the galaxy's name) together with its big companion ngc 3359. Since then I have added more luminance and even collected Ha data for this image. The integration time is 28 hrs and 46 minutes.

I never really got around processing this data, but recently I bought a new computer (with i9 processor), calibrated its display, and upgraded my version of PixInsight. I decided to test the upgraded image processing gear by redoing this image from raw subs.

The added data didn't do much to enhance the Little Cub, but I did manage to isolate two unidentified stellar regions near the larger galaxy. These are most likely either extensions of the spiral arms, or dwarf galaxies.

Here's the final result

More information on my Astrobin page.

https://www.astrobin.com/x4zhbz/

[wimvb]

I did a bit of homework on the faint fuzzies in the background. Managed to get quite a few. Quasars with redshift up to 2.8 (whatever that is in lightyears) and galaxies up to 6.3 billion Ly distant (z=0.48). Plus a few unidentified objects that are most likely dwarf satellite galaxies belonging to ngc 3359.

The streaks at the top are reflections from a bright star (HD 93551) just outside the fov. I didn't remove them from this image.

QSO: Quasy Stellar Object

ClG: Cluster of Galaxies

BCG: Brightest galaxy in a cluster

WD: White Dwarf (there is even a brown dwarf  in the fov, but those are a bit hard to capture 😄 )

Edited July 6, 2022 by wimvb