Another NGC 7331, Deer Lick Group and associates

[tomato]

Close on the heels of @wimvb's great and very deep image, is 330 x 2 mins with the Esprit 150/IMX571OSC dual rig. All 11 hrs were captured in a single night, for once everything ran smoothly after I retired to bed, and the sky stayed clear until dawn.

It is a slightly wide FOV as the centre shifted to the left after the meridian flip. Calibrated and stacked in APP, this took 21 hrs with the application of LNC 3 iterations to smooth out the edges on stacking, but I suspect my PC went into sleep mode shortly after I did. Processed in PI and AP. There is no IFN visible that I can see but plenty of fainter galaxies present, I probably need to double the integration time from my location.

Thanks for looking

[wimvb]

Excellent.

47 minutes ago, tomato said:

Close on the heels of @wimvb

So, can we expect another image of this group with ifn, any time soon? 😉

[tomato]

Thanks Wim, I tried last night to add another 11 hrs but the clouds didn’t cooperate and of course the moon is now starting to encroach but keep watching.

[jjosefsen]

Beautiful. I haven't imaged this in a long time, but I don't remember seeing details like that last I attempted.. 👌

[assouptro]

Very nice! 
I haven’t had a go at this area but know how difficult it can be to image galaxies whilst keeping the Stea under control and you have done a great job 

Thanks for sharing 

Bryan 

[tomato]

OK, now at 15.7 hrs integration, maybe the slightest hint of IFN coming through in between NGC 7331 and Stephan's Quintet? The problem is the moon is now putting a big gradient on the last 4-5 hours of data and in removing this I suspect the IFN is going out with it. Still, there is a bit more nebulosity around the smaller galaxies, so I guess it is worth it.

[wimvb]

Love it! I think you can safely darken the background slightly. In PI I would use an S-curve with the upper half linear, ie the S restricted to the lower half of the curve.

[gorann]

That is great Steve! With some careful processing you can probably subdue the core of the main galaxy to get some details out. But if I was you I wait until the moon is gone for more data on galaxies. Now is the time for NB filters.

[tomato]

Thanks for the feedback. Tonight I was going to put one of my IMX571 OSC cameras on the RASA and set it up on @Tomatobro’s EQ6 on the lawn to capture Ha on M31 and carry on dual imaging Ha for NGC 7331 using the Esprits with my other OSC/dual band filter and the G2-8300 but alas it looks like the venerable CCD  has given up the ghost, just keeps downloading dark images.

Is this how CCD imaging will end, not with a bright bang, but a dark whimper?

[tomato]

G2-8300 now fixed, it was a sticking shutter, probably caused by my ham fisted reassembly after a filter change.

So this image might get some Ha after all…