NGC 4725 and NGC 4747 - interacting pair of galaxies

[ONIKKINEN]

Around 8 hours from decent darkness across 3 short nights, but troubled seeing:

Annotated version:

And a closeup of the 2 spirals:

NGC 4725 and NGC 4747 are the 2 interacting galaxies in the image at a distance of slightly greater than 70 million light years. NGC 4712, the photogenic looking spiral galaxy is unrelated to the interactive pair at a distance greater than 220 million light years. Some of the PGC fuzzies are crossing well into the billion light year territory, and who knows how far away some of the dimmer un-annotated specks of pixels are in the image!

Quite satisfied with the image for now, given that average FWHM of the stacked image is around 4'', which is really not good for such a small target. Initially looked like a waste of time but detail does emerge after pushing sharpening really hard so maybe good seeing is not required to attempt smaller targets after all. Of course will look out for this target and may add sharper data in the future if a suitable night arises.

Comments, critique welcome of course!

-Oskari

Edited April 22, 2023 by ONIKKINEN

[Craig a]

Beautiful image and really well controlled, what gear was used to grab these fabulous galaxys?

[The Admiral]

Nice detail and star colour. I assume that you used your fast 8" Newtonian for this.

Ian

[ONIKKINEN]

3 hours ago, Craig a said:

Beautiful image and really well controlled, what gear was used to grab these fabulous galaxys?

3 hours ago, The Admiral said:

Nice detail and star colour. I assume that you used your fast 8" Newtonian for this.

Ian

Thank you!

Yes, used the usual kit in my signature: 8'' newtonian, RisingCam IMX571 OSC camera, TeleVue Paracorr, UV/IR filter. Natively the newt is around f/4.4 so with the 1.15x paracorr it is just about f/5.

[900SL]

Nice work Oskari. Good colour in that image, came out well considering the seeing. 

[Rodd]

Fantastic!   Love this galaxy.  4”” seems very high. But oft times it can be misleading.  Whatever you did was wholly successful. Amazing

[ONIKKINEN]

12 hours ago, Rodd said:

Fantastic!   Love this galaxy.  4”” seems very high. But oft times it can be misleading.  Whatever you did was wholly successful. Amazing

Thank you Rodd, i think looking back at everything i imaged in the 2022-2023 season this one was the best. Processing wise at least its by far my favourite where most things look "just right" to my eyes which usually is not the case. Most times there are some things i would like changed after looking at an image for a couple of weeks, but this one still looks good to me.

This image and some others have made me rethink how i interpret measured FWHM, and maybe i shouldn't take it at face value so strictly. Just for comparison, below is a simple processing only image with no sharpening or deconvolution of any type applied: