Coddington's Nebula among IFN - a collaboration

[gorann]

As you can see Coddington's nebula IC2574 is a galaxy! It is a dwarf spiral galaxy discovered by American astronomer Edwin Foster Coddington in 1898. At the time galaxies were not clearly distinguished from other lumps of nebulosity. It is an outlying member of the M81 group. For those that believe in dark matter this galaxy is made up of 90% of the stuff. Just like M81 and M82, this galaxy is surrounded by a lot of IFN (Integrated Flux Nebulosity), which is faintly shining dust energized by the collective radiation of the Milky Way. The RASA is great for disclosing IFN.

This is 9 hours of RASA8 (ASI2600MC, no filter) data (see https://www.astrobin.com/8z3xtt/C/ ) and to the galaxy I have added 19 hours of LHaRGB data collected by Wim van Berlo @wimvb with his SW MN190 telescope and ASI294MM.

Please zoom in - there is quite a bit of detail to be seen in the galaxy.

 

Here is Wim's post showing his close up of the galaxy:

 

[tomato]

Great collaboration, a real best of both worlds result. On my IPad screen I’m seeing a couple of reddish concentric rings in the dust pretty much centred on the galaxy, what do you think?

[gorann]

58 minutes ago, tomato said:

Great collaboration, a real best of both worlds result. On my IPad screen I’m seeing a couple of reddish concentric rings in the dust pretty much centred on the galaxy, what do you think?

Thanks Steve! I do not see the rings. Good if you check it on another device and get back to me if you still see them. If they are artifacts I assume @wimvb would also have spotted them.

[tomato]

To be fair, they do not appear to be as prominent on my processing monitor, and of course once the brain has 'seen' a pattern, it is hard to reset it. Apologies for messing up your wonderful image with these yellow lines, but this is where I thought I was seeing them. I don't think they are artefacts in your image, more likely artefacts in my head...

 

[gorann]

13 minutes ago, tomato said:

To be fair, they do not appear to be as prominent on my processing monitor, and of course once the brain has 'seen' a pattern, it is hard to reset it. Apologies for messing up your wonderful image with these yellow lines, but this is where I thought I was seeing them. I don't think they are artefacts in your image, more likely artefacts in my head...

 

Let's hope for the brain hypothesis🤣

Edited March 2, 2023 by gorann

[wimvb]

6 hours ago, tomato said:

Great collaboration, a real best of both worlds result. On my IPad screen I’m seeing a couple of reddish concentric rings in the dust pretty much centred on the galaxy, what do you think?

Thanks. Regarding the rings, I will have a closer look on my computer screen, which seems very unforgiving when it comes to faint variations. The area around M81/M82 contains a lot of ifn, but from several wide field images I have seen, the ifn is very weak around this galaxy. So the data is stretched more than Jane Fonda during her 1980-ies workout period.

[gorann]

18 hours ago, tomato said:

To be fair, they do not appear to be as prominent on my processing monitor, and of course once the brain has 'seen' a pattern, it is hard to reset it. Apologies for messing up your wonderful image with these yellow lines, but this is where I thought I was seeing them. I don't think they are artefacts in your image, more likely artefacts in my head...

 

Yes, if I stretch the image further I can see rings also on my screen. I am quite sure that the reason is Gradient XTerminator that I have seen causing rings like this before. I guess the image is rather ok for most screens as long as it is not further stretched. I could also desaturate the sky a bit. It would be good if Russ would make a new AI version of Gradient XT 😉