SGL 2023 Challenge 4 - Galaxies

[Clarkey]

I'm going to add this picture as it is the only image I have managed this galaxy season due to the permacloud. I now have virtually no astro darkness to use so the imaging kit is back indoors for the summer.☹️

This is Dwarf galaxy NGC4395. It is relatively large for a dwarf galaxy, but has a very low surface brightness. Found in Canes Venatici and approximately 14 million light years distant - so closer than many of the Messier objects.

This was taken in LRGB using a 115mm triplet over three nights 18th - 20th. The seeing on the first night was excellent but unfortunately deteriorated to be pretty poor on the second and third nights. Total of 5 hours luminance and about 1.5 hours of RGB.

 

 

[PeterC65]

I do EAA not AP, so my images are snapshots of the live stacks on the night, sometimes tweaked a little afterwards using Affinity Photo and Topaz DeNoise.

Here is M51 taken on the 19th April using the Explorer 150PDS and Uranus-C camera, 149 x 4s frames, Astronomik Clear filter, using dark frames (my first time doing this).

 

[Yawning Angel]

M106 and it's fuzzy companions. 

APM 107 / 700mm - asi1600mm - Baader filters - iOptron CEM60

150 x 120sec Luminance
60 x 120sec each RG & B
48 x 300sec Ha

Total integration time 15 hours. Processed in PixInsight - The RGB was a fight, as it was captured under a full moon, but a clear night isn't something to be squandered 🙂

[petevasey]

Like many others at my latitude, twilight nights are upon me. Last night only 30 minutes of full darkness because of the crescent Moon, but at least it was clear!  Three very promising lovely clear evenings last week clouded over with the dreaded North Sea cloud as soon as the Sun set.  So much of this image was taken with the 23% Moon in the West.  Nevertheless the relative height of my chosen target gave me a worthwhile image.  I wanted to try something I'd never imaged before,  so went for the Hickson 68 galaxy cluster in Canes Venatici which includes NGCs 5350, 5353, 5354, 5355, and 5358, and by using the wider field of my SharpStar 140 also included the nice spiral of NGC 5371.  Thin high haze and slight mist later hence the halos round the brighter stars.  The very bright red one next to the galaxies is mag 6.5!  Several other background galaxies can be seen.  QSI 683 on SharpStar 140.  Luminance 9 x 10 minutes, RGB each 5 x 10 minutes, all binned 2x2.  Full size image attached.  If it is going to be clear tonight I have a brighter target in mind, but.... 😧

Cheers,

Peter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 29, 2023 by petevasey
Added galaxy names

[IDM]

Pretty much the end of my season as well but thought I would have a go at the Markarian chain as I have never seen or tried it before. The image was take on the 2oth April and consists of 137 30 second subs so a total of about 1 hour and 9 minutes. I took many more subs but had to discard as they were plagues with cloud!! The image was taken with my Altair 70EDQ-R F5 with a QHY183C camera, gain 11. Subs were stacked with DSS and processed with Siril and Gimp. Not going to win any awards but I was pleased. Thanks for looking.

Ian

[Budgie1]

An LRGB rendition of M51 with just over 6 hours of integration.

It was taken over three nights, 9th, 14th & 18th April, using Skywatcher Evostar 100ED DS Pro with 0.85 FF/FR, Atik 428EX camera and Baader LRGB filters. Stacked & processed in PI.

[Budgie1]

My last image for the season, I'm only getting an hour or so of Astro Darkness at this time of year and that'll be gone in a couple of days.

This is 9 hours 20 minutes of integration on M101, Pinwheel, using an Evostar 100ED DS Pro with 0.85 FF/FR and ZWO ASI294MC Pro camera at gain 120, offset 30 and 240s exposures. Stacked & processed in PI, but I had issues with the flats over correcting, so I didn't use any, just Darks on this one.

[AndrewRrrrrr]

"One for the price of Two!"

in a similar vein to the earlier Cosmic Horseshoe pic, here's the gravitationally lensed Twin Quasar near NGC3079 in Ursa Major. 150 mins  of L with 15 mins each of RGB using a Altair Astro Wave 80.  This one is only 8.7 GLyr away! 

Edited April 26, 2023 by AndrewRrrrrr

[Stuartmyatt76]

M81 +M82 

 

72 x 300 seconds

 

Askar 107PHQ 

ZWO AM5 

ZWO ASI 2600MC

[Budgie1]

I thought I may as well enter this one as it's the only other galaxy I've imaged this season.

This is just 3 hours 20 mins on M106 taken on the morning of the 19th April 2023. I had planned to get more integration time on this one but I ran out of astro darkness.

Taken with the Atik 428EX & Baader LRGB filters, through the Evostar 100ED DS Pro, 0.85 FF/FR.

Lum = 20 x 240s Bin 1x1

RGB = 20 each x 120s @ Bin 2x2

Stacked & processed in PI.

 

[Simon Pepper]

Here is my take on M51. I actually imaged this on my first ever astro camp with @carastro (thanks Carole) amongst others. Its the first image I have taken outside the comfort of the back garden. Image was taken on the 21st of April during 21:30 and 00:30  the clouds rolled in. It was also the first light for my 533MC Pro which I have to say is a great little camera! Due to the minimal integration time I was hoping to add some more data, however lack of clear skies and the moon have put a stop to that for now. Its a pretty aggressive crop because I took my flats the following day with dew on the lens which was a school boy error and because of this had awful artefacts. After throwing out 10 or so subs I was left with a measly 2:45 considering the low amount here at F7.5 I think it came out better than expected.  Scope was ES127ed with a hotech FF.  Looking forward to the next camp already. Thanks 

 

 

[powerlord]

Ok, I'm finally going for it - I'll not repeat the life story behind this - it's all on its own thread:

Suffice to say, I think I've spend as long editing this as I have in the integration time *well, the Ha anyway). Definitely a new experience for me. And hopefully it will be a lot quicker the next time!

I've ended up with about 11 hours of Ha, and about 7 hours of RGB, though there was more of both which was thrown away as seeing not good enough.

Shot with my SW 300PDS, mk3 CC and asi2600, with L-ultimate for the Ha.

It's very much been a learning experience, and a big thanks to @ollypenrice, @wimvb and @vlaiv in particular for helping point me in the right direction.

It's edited in Siril and Affinity Photo, with NoiseX and StarX used.

I found it helpful to compare this with Hubble's image while working on this, and I've attached a (256 colour of course) animated gif as I think it gives a good idea, at least imho, of what can be achieved from yer back garden on the edge of a town in the South of England. I suppose that goes both ways - for me I'm still amazed I can capture pics of any of this, so to see my image recognisably mapping to Hubble I find awesome. However I suppose the glass half empty viewer might look and say how blurry it is compared to Hubble. Depends on your point of view I suppose.

I've also captured a fair number of tiny wee galaxies in there - for example the little yellow line to the right of M82 - thats not a blurred yellow star - it's a tiny wee galaxy. There's lots of these all over the image which I find almost as amazing as being able to capture the big guy in the middle.

Man in a garden shed vs Hubble:

Edited May 6, 2023 by powerlord
updated - had clipped it a bit

[MikeeJC]

Another M51 Whirlpool galaxy here.

Taken over 3 nights in April (after waiting ages for a clear night, managed to get get 3 over the month).  Total of 11 hours, 46 minutes integration time.  Plus 50 dark frames, 40 flats and 20 dark flats.

Taken with a RisingCam IMX571 OSC, Esprit 120ED on a EQ6R-Pro mount.

Stacked in DeepSkyStacker, processed in Siril, Adobe Lightroom and GIMP.

[AstroGS]

I never planned to take this image but, i am really happy with the wide field framing that includes also the Owl Nebula and its simplicity.

Used the Stellamira 90ED Triplet, with the ASI2600MC and the 2" L-Pro, on a ZWO AM5.

63 x 300 sec + 50 x Flats, Bias and Darks.

I tried to keep exposures at 300 secs (rather than the 600 secs that I usually use), to ensure that the owl nebula will not be over-exposed.

[powerlord]

One from last night. Forecast was for an hour of clear viewing with good seeing, then clouds. But in the end I got 2 hours and 20 mins of imaging on NGC4565 - The Needle Galaxy.

Shot with my 300PDS supergun and asi2600 on an EQ6R pro.

Edited in Siril and Affinity Photo.

Quite a few other galaxies in the mix, only some of which Siril has annotated, but attached anyway for ref.

 

Edited May 8, 2023 by powerlord

[petevasey]

I thought with twilight upon me and lousy weather here I wouldn't get another opportunity!  But last night was nice and clear for over 3 hours of Astronomical twilight, so I managed to get this target which I'd been wanting to do ever since I got my SharpStar 140.  Two takes on it, one standard RGB, one with the Ha added which shows up the active areas in both galaxies.  Of course as we see in this competition M82 is particularly active - I would have liked to enter a nice shot I have, but it was taken in 2012 😄  QSI 683 on SharpStar 140.  Luminance 13 x 5 minutes, RGB each 5 x 5 minutes, Ha 9 x 10 minutes, all binned 2x2.  Incidentally that faint fuzzy area just above M81 isn't 'noise', it's the very diffuse dwarf galaxy Holmberg IX (UGC 5336) magnitude quoted between 14.4 and 16.5, rather lost in the twilight glow.

Cheers,

Peter

Edited May 11, 2023 by petevasey

[Dan_Paris]

  Hi,

I was able to shoot only two galactic fields in April due to the bad weather conditions, with my usual setup  (200/800 custom Newtonian astrograph with Romano Zen optics and carbon fiber tube, AP900 mount, ASI183mm,  TS 2.5" Riccardi-Wynne corrector, ZWO LRGB filters, guiding with ZWO OAG + ASI120mm mini + AsiairV1)

First M106 and friends in LRGBH from my backyard (Paris' suburbs, Bortle 7/8) on April 16th (right click for full resolution)

Luminance : 320 *60sec,  chrominance : 30*60sec for each R, G and B filter, H-alpha : 115*300sec

The second picture was shot under much darker skies (Bortle 3) in Southern France (Drôme provencale) but with rather bad seeing. This field contains the beautiful intermediate barred spiral galaxy NGC4725 in Coma Berenices, together with the irregular galaxy NGC4747 or Arp159, the spiral NGC4712 and many others (right click for full resolution):

 

 

Luminance : 220 *60sec, chrominance : 25*60sec for each R, G and B filter

 

 

Clear skies to all,

 

Dan

Edited May 16, 2023 by Dan_Paris

[Denys]

Hi all,

Here is my take on M83. It was my first time (seriously) capturing a galaxy. I don't think it's an award-winning picture, as there are some really impressive images here, but I thought I would share it since I haven't seem any picture of this galaxy on the challenge yet. Taken with my SW 150PDS with an old canon 500D on an EQM-35-pro mount. 199x25sec plus calibration frames. Stacked with DSS and processed in Siril, then sharpened with AstroSharp (by the way, a shoutout to the guy who made this tool available! I don't know his name, but you can check his YT channel "Deep Sky Detail" if you wanna check this sharpening tool yourself, really interesting, imo)...

 

[Vroobel]

Hi,

Now I'm ready to present much better picture of the M51, which was my main goal till now.

The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), 15-16/5/2023

Bresser Messier 10" F/5, Baader MPCC III, IDAS LPS-P2, ASI 2600MC-Pro @ OpusMagnum ATM EQ fork mount, ASIair Plus
177 x 60s, Gain 101, default offset, -10°C
ASTAP (stacking), PixInsight (BlurX), Affinity Photo (GradientX, StarX, NoiseX, stretching)

 

 

This is a higher level of my primary setup: the 90kg ATM EQ fork mount with 17kg 10" F/5 Newtonian with accessories.

I wrote it's a higher level, because this setup never fully satisfied me till now. I used the Astroberry with its Ekos and PHD2. Guiding offered by the PHD2 very rarely was below 1" total RMS, usually it was nearly 2". Recently I bought the ASIair Plus and after obtaining decent guiding with Celestron CGX (around 0.8") I decided to give my ATM fork mount another chance. The result is outstanding, if we take into account that it's a fully home-made mount built from scratch: nearly all the session the total RMS was below 0.8", very often it was around 0.65" and sometimes reached really low value like 0.56". I think that the harmonic gearing used for the RA axis just showed its class. The question is why does the PHD2 run on the same Raspberry Pi 4 (my Astroberry has 8GB RAM) cannot do the same as the ASIair Plus?

Edited May 16, 2023 by Vroobel

[DaveS]

M64, the "Blackeye" galaxy

This is 4 hours RGB (8 x 10 mins each) bin 2 and 4 hours Luminance in bin 1 This is very thin data, but with astro dark rapidly vanishing was all I could get. Captured on the 13th  and 15th May with the ODK 12 / SX694

Stacking in AstroArt 8, initial post in PixInsight Blur X for the Lum, Noise X Masked Stretch and SPCC on the RGB, final LRGB combination and colour refining in AA8 again

The conditions were far from ideal, hence the lack of detail in the spiral arms, but it is what it is.

[Petrol]

I don't usually post images on the forum because I felt they weren't good enough. After a massive amount of help from Yawning Angel, Laurin Dave and Olly, I seem to have made a bit of progress.

M51, 12 & 14th May 23

Bortle 5
APM Astrograph 107/700
ASI 533 OSC @ -10C
ZWO UV/IR Cut Filter
60 Light frames at 60s
Flats & Dark Flats using NINA and a Geoptik panel
EQ6 Guided
Pixinsight, WBP, Star, Noise & BlurXterminator plugins

Thanks for looking
Clear Skies
Pete

 

[tomato]

Here is Copeland's Septet in Leo, ground out over 5 sessions in May, inevitably some of the data was captured outside of Astro darkness.

Taken with the Esprit150/ASI178/LRGB dual rig, binned 2x2, 0.94 arcsec per pixel, 12.23 hrs captured, as follows:

L 200x 2 mins

R 55 x 2 mins

G  56 x 2 mins

B 56 x 2 mins

Calibrated and stacked in APP, LP removal and colour calibration in APP, processed in PI and Affinity Photo, image is cropped to put the galaxy group centre stage and remove my horrendous session overlaps.

 

Edited June 2, 2023 by tomato
Updated process of original data

[Dan_Paris]

Thanks to an unexpected period of good weather this week, I was able to add two new pictures to my galaxies collection.

This field in Canes Venatici contains three galaxies belonging to the same group, about 50 millions l.y. away. NGC5033 (top left) is a relatively large spiral with a bright core (active nucleus) but rather faint arms. NGC5005 (top right) is an intermediate spiral and NGC5002 (bottom) is a small Magellanic spiral galaxy.

Nights have become very short at my latitude (+49°), about three hours of darkness, so I had to shoot over  two nights to get enough data from my light-polluted backyard. There's overall 4h30 of luminance and 25min for each R, G and B filter (right click for full resolution):

 

Then the last two nights I was able to shoot 6h of luminance on M51, that does not need to be introduced, that I mixed with color from last year (right click for full res):

 

 

 

 

Clear skies,

Dan

 

Technical details

Scope: 200/800 custom Newtonian astrograph with Romano Zen optics and carbon fiber tube on AP900 mount
Camera: ASI183mm (0.66"/pix)
TS 2.5" Riccardi-Wynne corrector
ZWO LRGB filters
Guiding : ZWO OAG + ASI120mm mini + AsiairV1
Conditions : Bortle 7 skies in Paris' suburbs, average seeing (2.3" median FWHM on the luminance stack)
Processing with Pixinsight

Edited May 23, 2023 by Dan_Paris

[Lee_P]

This is M81 and M82 captured using an OSC camera and no filters from Bortle 8 Bristol city centre. Eagle-eyed @tomato and @ONIKKINEN spotted some IFN -- something I thought impossible considering the imaging location!

* 7 to 20 April 2023
* Bristol, UK (Bortle 8 )
* Telescope: Askar 130PHQ Flatfield Astrograph
* Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC-PRO
* Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ6-R PRO
* Guide: William Optics 50mm Guidescope with 1.25″ RotoLock; ZWO ASI 120MM Mini
* Control: ASIAIR Plus
* Software: PixInsight, Lightroom
* Filters:
– No filter 600 x 120 seconds (20 hours)

Total integration time: 20 hours

By Lee Pullen

[AstroGS]

M106 captured from our backyard in Northampton, using:

• Stellamira ED90 Triplet + 0.8 Reducer/Flattener
• ASI2600MC + 2" L-Pro filter
• ZWO AM5
• 91 x 300 sec subs (over 2 nights) + 50x Darks, Bias and FlatsIntegrated and processed with PI