SGL 2023 Challenge 4 - Galaxies

[powerlord]

I think this one has more recognisable galaxies* in it than any other image I've captured so far in the last 2 1/2 years. I've really enjoyed bringing them out in the data.

Canes Venatici - M106, NGC4217, NGC4226, NGC4232, NGC4231, NGC4248 Amongst quite a few others.

I initially grabbed about 2 hours of RGB, and spent quite a long time editing it before realising that I really needed a lot more integration time.

Amazingly this month as the moon waned, I got some clear nights, and I managed to capture a total of 12 1/2 hours of OSC RGB data, and 3 hours of L-ultimate Ha/Oiii narrowband data. All with my asi2600.

During the capturing though, my 'Iraqi Supergun' 300PDS/EQ6r-pro started to guide worse and worse  - I have a feeling my PSU has become unreliable, so I had to shoot much shorter subs than I would usually, which meant 3 min subs on Ha rather than my preference for 10 min subs. That way, less wasted time as jittering tracking ruins 3 mins at a time rather than 10.

The RGB too, would have taken 5 min subs I think, but I had to settle for 3 min.

Then came editing - and that has been another marathon session, a bit like my M82 posted earlier. But it did become clear that the extra integration time was worth it - with some extra detail and extents in the smaller galaxies, and the outer areas of M106.

I'd have loved more Ha, but I've ran out of time with other commitments. Still, it has started to bring out the looping Ha 'jet' which makes M106 quite unusual, looping down to the top left in the picture from the galaxy centre/blackhole.

I felt this vertical framing fitted best, taking a bit of the focus off M106 and letting the viewer move around and spot the many other galaxies here.

I've attached a starless version (not for entry into comp - just for information - hope that's ok mods? ), to make it easier to spot all the smaller galaxies.

As with M82, I've taken the liberty of aligning a reference pic from wikipedia and doing a little gif animation to show my efforts from my Ipswich back garden Observatory, vs NASA.

*i.e. more than just a blob.

Starless for info only (ignore for purposes of competition):

And finally the 'Me vs Nasa' gif:

[AndyThilo]

My entry and my favourite galaxy M51. Imaged on the 19th and 20th May, details below

• Altair EDT-F 130mm @ 910mm f7
• ASI2600MC Pro no filter
• EQ6R Pro
• 215 x 120s lights - 7h 10mins
• 40 x Darks, no flats/dark flats
• Processed in PI
• B4 East Anglia, UK

[Graeme]

M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, now with added supernova! This is my first image since last August! I was off sick for the second half of last year and I've been building (slowly) my new observatory this year, so it's the observatory first light image too. The build is still unfinished but the astro imaging withdrawal became too much after I heard about the supernova!

9.25STC, CGX, f/6.3 Focal Reducer, Pegasus PB Advance, ASI294MC Pro. 65 x 60 second Lights, unguided because I couldn't focus the guide camera! 10 x Darks, 30 x Flats, 30 x Dark Flats. Captured in NINA 20/05/23.  Stacked and processed in Pixinsight. 

 

 

It's great to be back in the game!

Regards

Graeme

[Bikingbill]

The Whirlpool Galaxy M51. Taken on Saturday 20th May with my old 8" Orion Optics f6 Newtonian and ZWO ASI 533mc camera. 60x120 second subs.

[DaveS]

HCG 61, the "Box"

This is just 6 hours of data, barely enough to make an image. 1 hour each RGB, and 3 hours Luminance, all in 600 sec subs collected on the 21st (RGB), and 24th (L) Stacked in AstroArt 8, then BlurX, NoiseX SPCC (On the RGB) and MaskedStretch. Final LRGB combination and Unsharp Mask in AstroArt. I desperately need new Flat frames as I had to push the background down further than I would like. Captured with the ODK 12 and SX Trius 694 with Baader LRGB filters on the DDM 85

[Doversole]

Here is the Pinwheel galaxy, on the left taken on the 24th May, on the right taken the 2nd April, both from my garden in South-East England.

RC8 scope from StellaLyra, ASI071MC cool camera, on a EQ6R-Pro mount. About 4 hours integration for both images.

The image on the 2nd April was under a very bright Full moon (but one of the only clear night in April!!)

[tomato]

I wasn't planning to image M101 for this competition, but SN2023IXF had other ideas. I can't show the before image as it wasn't captured within the competition timeframe but here is the SN image. Interestingly when stretching the star only image, the SN was the first star to appear out of the  background, so it has made it's mark. Usual Esprit150/ASI178/2x2/LRGB capture, around 5.5 hrs of integration.

[Tomatobro]

In Camelopardalis NGC2403 can be found.  About 8 million light years away and 50,000 light years in diameter, its and outlying galaxy of the M81 group.

10inch RC QHY268 mono

5 hours Luminance, 1 hour each of RGB, stacked in APP, further processing in Pixinsight, and Gimp.

[AstroGS]

Managed to have some clear skies last night that allowed me to get the Stellamira ED90 Triplet out and go for the M101 and the supernova. I knew that I wouldn't have too long as it was supposed to get clouds around 1am so no more than 3 hours in total and probably about an hour of astronomical night.

32 x 300 sec subs + 50 flats, darks and bias

SM ED90 + Reducer/ Flattener x0.80 + ASI2600MC + L-Pro on a ZWO AM5. Integrated and processed with PI.

[tomato]

Here is NGC 4559, Caldwell 6 or the "Koi Carp Galaxy" as it is aptly named in Stellarium. 90% of the subs taken in Nautical Darkness with the Esprit150/ASI178/LRGB dual rig, binned 2x2, as follows:

L 141 x 2 mins

R 41 x 2 mins

G 38 x 2 mins

B 42 x 2 mins

8.73 hrs total Integration. Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in PI and Affinity Photo.

 

[tomato]

Astro darkness has long gone, but the competition doesn't close until the end of June, and with a recent run of clear, albeit bright skies, I am going to try to keep knocking them out. 

This is NGC 5905 and NGC 5908, some 160 million light years distant, but only separated by 600 thousand light years so they must be quite a sight in the skies of each respective galaxy.

Captured with the Esprit 150/ASI178/binned 2x2  dual rig,  total integration 11.67 hrs. Calibrated and stacked in APP, colour calibration in APP, further processing in PI and Affinity Photo. The odd looking seahorse shaped galaxy in the top left is PGC 54557, but that is all I know about it.

[AMcD]

This is my LHaRGB image of M101, comprising of 10 hours 25 minutes of luminance (taken mainly during astronomical darkness) and 4 hours 52 minutes of red, 4 hours 30 minutes of green, 3 hours 18 minutes of blue and 3 hours 4 minutes of Ha (taken mainly in astronomical twilight), captured between 10 April and 26 May 2023.  Towards the end of the project SN2023ixf made its appearance.  It appears bluish in this image, I believe because it post dated only the green, blue and Ha imaging sessions.  The total of approximately 26 hours of integrations were captured with a QHY268M and Antlia Pro L, Ha, R, G and B filters attached to a TS130 Photoline Triplet APO mounted on a Losmandy G11 under Bortle 5 skies.  The data was captured with SGPro and processed in PixInsight. 

Annotated version:

[Simon Pepper]

So many M101s here now. We should all share our data and create a 100hour super integration! Here is my take on the SN. It’s 12.5 hours of data from four nights last week. I also took a night of Ha data but my poor processing skills can’t seem to add it correctly. Image was taken with ES127 with 0.7 reducer and ZWO533MC. 

[powerlord]

Probably my last entry I think - The Black eye galaxy. One I've been meaning to have a go at for a while.

5 hours of subs from my 300pds on EQ6r-pro mount with an asi2600. No Ha, just no filter RGB.

Only about 30% of those 5 min subs were sharp though, the rest I just used to fill in the faint stuff. There's a few other wee galaxies present, the most obvious one being the Seyfert 1 Galaxy - at about 5 oclock out from the top right brightest star - a flying saucer shaped galaxy.

Edited in affinity photo 2, before getting sick of it, and re-editing it in affinity photo 1 (2 is imho still pretty terrible). StarX and NoiseX used along with Siril for photometric colour calibration and a bit of deconvolving.

stu

[Dan_Paris]

Well, I thought that the galaxy season was over, but I managed to take another one last week over two nights before the moon was too bright. Certainly the last!

Hickson 68 in Canes Venatici is a compact galaxy group about 100 million l.y. away containing the barred spiral NGC 5350 as well as four lenticular galaxies (NGC 5353, NGC 5354, NGC 5355 and  NGC 5358), with a bright mag. 6.5 star nearby. The other interesting galaxy in the field is the intermediate spiral NGC 5371, about 130 millions l.y. away. I also like the shape of the small  PGC49480 near the top as well as the very distant galaxy cluster below NGC 5371.

Right click for full resolution:

 

Clear skies to all,

 

Dan

 

Technical details

200/800 custom Newtonian astrograph with Romano Zen optics and carbon fiber tube
AP900 CP4 mount on Losmandy HD tripod

ASI183mm (0.66"/pix)
TS 2.5" Riccardi-Wynne corrector
ZWO LRGB filters
Guiding : ZWO OAG + ASI120mm mini + AsiairV1
Luminance : 420 *60sec
Chrominance : 30*60sec for each R, G and B filter
Conditions : Bortle 7 skies in Paris' suburbs, decent seeing (2.25" median FWHM on the luminance stack)
Processing with Pixinsight

 

 

Edited May 31, 2023 by Dan_Paris

[Rodd]

NGC 5905 and 5908

C11edge with .7x reducer and ASI 1600

LRGB, Bin 2, about 19.5 hours

Edited June 5, 2023 by Rodd

[Springles]

Another M101. Just starting to learn and couldn't resist taking a look at the SN! This was all I could get in the field of view without a reducer and with the 224.

C8 SCT, ASI224 on an AZ-EQ6. Unguided. 243x29s exposures (about as long as I can get without having to throw away too many). Taken in SharpCap and stacked in APP. Tweaked (not very well) in Photoshop. 50 bias, 50 dark, 50 flat, 243 (more or less!) usable lights. Had to crop off a small amount on the edges due to the stacking artefacts (it moved a lot in the field of view over the few hours of imaging).

Dave

[Vroobel]

Hi,

The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), 15/5/2023

Bresser Messier 10" F/5, MPCC Mk III, IDAS LPS-P2, ASI 2600MC-Pro, ASIair Plus @ Opus Magnum ATM EQ Fork Mount
177 x 60s (2h 57m), Gain 101, -10°C
ASTAP, PixInsight, Affinity Photo

Full size picture: https://www.astrobin.com/full/9km0fx/B/?mod=&real=

Edited June 11, 2023 by Vroobel

[Vroobel]

And one more for now.

Supernova 2023ixf in Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) - my first multi-night imaging over 5 nights: 2023.05.25, 26, 28, 29 and 30

Bresser Messier 10" F/5, MPCC Mk III, IDAS LPS-P2, ASI 2600MC-Pro, ASIair Plus @ Opus Magnum ATM EQ Fork Mount
77×120″ (2h 34m) and 555×60″ (9h 15m) gain: 101, -10°C
ASTAP, PixInsight, Affinity Photo

Full size picture: https://www.astrobin.com/full/7zkm5o/0/?mod=&real=

[AMcD]

 

The many clear nights recently have permitted me a further entry.  The data for this LHaRGB image of M51 was acquired during astronomical twilight over the course of a number of nights in late May and early June.  The total of 16 hours and 30 minutes of integrations comprises 8 hours 30 minutes of luminance, 3 hours 30 minutes of H-alpha and 1 hour 30 minutes each of red, green and blue.  The data was acquired under Bortle 5 skies using a QHY268M and Antlia Pro LHaRGB filters with my TS 130 Photoline Triplet APO mounted on a Losmandy G11 using SGPro.  It was processed using PixInsight. 

 

 

[powerlord]

Well, I must be one card short of a full deck, but with a week of clear nights a week before the longest day is no excuse not to get out there - while I started with some narrowband targets, for the last few nights I set my sights on M94 - the double ring starburst galaxy. At least the moon is almost gone.

So shooting this when there is no proper darkness is not the brightest idea - and the proof of that is in how faint the outer ring is. However, to be honest I'm pleasantly surprised I got it at all. 

It is a very colourful galaxy (hence the name), but there doesn't appear to be any consensus on its colours if you look at images - with some having it a bright magenta (even a recent apod from this month), some showing it as a reasonably colourless yellow or blue blob, whereas hubble clearly shows a yellow core, surrounded by blue the an outer red/bue type palette.

So - that's what I tried too eek out colour wise. Stacking in APP, some deconvolving in Siril, and then affinity photo, starX and noiseX.

4 hours of 3 min subs with my iraqi supergun 300pds and asi2600.

A target I'd definitely fancy another go at when we have longer nights.

stu

 

[Stefan73]

Here's a Leo triplet I took a while ago (on 6th, 7th, 17th and 19th April), back when there was darkness as a reasonable time.  139 x 180s subs with a 130PDS and ASI2600MC (gain 100 offset 24) on an EQ6-R with OAG guiding.  All controlled by Astroberry.  Stacking and processing in GraXpert, Siril and StarTools.

 

[Minhlead]

I hope this is not too late.

The image of the M101 on the night 20 of May.

Since there is a supernova going on, I got the chance to play with Vietnamese's largest scope. The CDK600 hosted at Explora Science Quy Nhon - Binh Dinh - Vietnam (I acquire the data myself remotely)

The supernova shows with a striking blue color (it even shows some blueness to the naked eye via the big scope, I've been told by someone had the chance to look at it visually.). A few days later the supernova shifted red and slowly faded away. 

Image taken via CDK600 and a QHY168C.

 

Edited June 21, 2023 by Minhlead

[Minhlead]

Another entry is an experiment that I do on my smaller Sharpstar 107PH.

The image was captured from my remote observatory in the skirt of Ha Noi, Vietnam. Although I used a relatively small fracs (107mm) the result was pleasantly detailed, in part due to the processing technique that involves BXT.

Edited June 21, 2023 by Minhlead

[petevasey]

9 hours ago, Minhlead said:

I hope this is not too late.

The image of the M101 on the night 19 of May.

Since there are a supernova going on, I got the chance to play with Vietnamese's largest scope. The CDK600 hosted at Explora Science Quy Nhon - Binh Dinh - Vietnam (I acquire the data myself remotely)

The supernova shows with a striking blue color (it even shows some blueness to the naked eye via the big scope, I've been told by someone had the chance to look at it visually.). A few days later the supernova shifted red and slowly faded away. 

Image taken via CDK600 and a QHY168C.

 

That's a cracking good image, but I'm slightly puzzled by the date mentioned.  19th May was the date the supernova was discovered by Koichi Itagaki.  And it certainly hadn't faded after a few days - I imaged it (in Astronomical twilight) on 24th May and it had brightened considerably as seen below.  QSI683 on RC10. Luminance 11 x 5 minutes, RGB each 5 x 5 minutes, all binned 2x2.

Date correction needed  perhaps?

Cheers, Peter

Edited June 21, 2023 by petevasey