15 hours of M106...and 30 minutes on M104

[WolfieGlos]

Further to my recent post on M106, I've been gathering more data (between the rain, clouds...) and have now brought this up to 15:40:00 hours of OSC RGB subs.

Continuing to use PI and the XT tools, here is hopefully the final process of this image, although I may drop the black point a tad; it depends which screen I look on!

Quite pleased I've managed to capture some detail in the smaller galaxies in this field such as NGC4231, and a distant galaxy cluster just above NGC 4248.

At this stage I'm a little undecided whether to pursue capturing RGB for detail in the outer spiral, a Ha capture for this image, or to move to another target altogether. Potentially I have 3 or 4 nights of clear skies this coming week, so that would enable a full capture of another galaxy.......

242x120s subs and 152x180s subs, all calibrated with a few darks, 20 flats and 25 dark-flats.

Stacked in Siril, fully processed in PI, with Blur/Noise/Star XT. Border added in GIMP. Comments and criticism welcome as always.

 

And whilst waiting for Astro-dark on Saturday evening, I had a quick look at M104 in Nautical darkness. Totally shocked that I captured this in only half an hour - 15x120s - with 2.6" guiding. In fact, I'm struggling to justify adding more subs to this! I think it may add a little bit of detail in the dust lanes, but as it's a small target is it worth it?

 

[Sarek]

Great work! Really like these images. I continue to be inspired by them, especially as we are using similiar kit and are located in the same part of the world.

I hope your clear nights prediction is correct!

[WolfieGlos]

10 hours ago, Sarek said:

Great work! Really like these images. I continue to be inspired by them, especially as we are using similiar kit and are located in the same part of the world.

I hope your clear nights prediction is correct!

Thanks Vaughn, that's great to hear 🙂 Yep, similar kit although your guiding is much better than mine if I recall! 

I spoke too soon about those clear skies...forecast has completely changed, looks like 1 or 2 nights later in the week now. Tonight was supposed to be clear according to the forecast this morning and at lunch....looked again at 6ish and nada, not a chance 🤣 

[geeklee]

23 hours ago, WolfieGlos said:

M106

They are both excellent Chris.  Really good colour and detail on M106 and you can just start to see the Ha regions popping out, including the fainter stuff.

I recently shot this with my 150P-DS and some Ha helped even though it wasn't much.  If you can get a lot - it reveals some really great structures.

[ONIKKINEN]

Excellent shots. Many nice background galaxies in the M106 image, some quite distant i believe.

[WolfieGlos]

6 hours ago, geeklee said:

They are both excellent Chris.  Really good colour and detail on M106 and you can just start to see the Ha regions popping out, including the fainter stuff.

I recently shot this with my 150P-DS and some Ha helped even though it wasn't much.  If you can get a lot - it reveals some really great structures.

Thanks Lee 🙂 I've seen an image with something like 30 hours of Ha which was remarkable. I captured 2 hours in the last Full Moon for a laugh, and it really didn't add anything to the image at all. It's not a process I'm overly familiar with having only followed a video for that attempt, so it might be a lack of knowledge/experience too.

1 hour ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Excellent shots. Many nice background galaxies in the M106 image, some quite distant i believe.

Thank you Oni 🙂

I believe they are, looking on Aladin Lite I can find a reference for "ClG J1217+4730 -- Cluster of Galaxies" and "LEDA 2299019 -- Brightest Galaxy in a Cluster (BCG)", but as for distances (and labelling the image to show them) I'm not sure how you get this data. Can you do this with the Annotate script  in PI?

[ONIKKINEN]

41 minutes ago, WolfieGlos said:

I'm not sure how you get this data. Can you do this with the Annotate script  in PI?

You could use the annotation script to get a name for the galaxy (SDSS +telephone number something something usually) and then search that up in Simbad and see if there is a measurement. Sometimes the annotation script can also include redshift if you tick the 'write txt file' thing in the options.

Then you can get a distance with the redshift value using something like this: https://astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html

You should try the milliquas catalogue in the PI annotation script, there are some 12+ billion light year quasars in this field that i am sure you have caught with the healthy integration time you have here. I caught a few last year at just 4 hours so you definitely also will since this image goes much deeper than mine did.

[geeklee]

1 hour ago, WolfieGlos said:

I captured 2 hours in the last Full Moon for a laugh, and it really didn't add anything to the image at all. It's not a process I'm overly familiar with having only followed a video for that attempt, so it might be a lack of knowledge/experience too.

I had a few attempts myself and still couldn't bring the full Ha signal through - although it did enough to enhance things.  Here was the Ha:

In the end I used the Continuum subtraction method but with some masking as well at the end as I couldn't get a great result.  It was only 4h Ha though (6nm, 533MM)

Edited May 8 by geeklee

[WolfieGlos]

3 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

You could use the annotation script to get a name for the galaxy (SDSS +telephone number something something usually) and then search that up in Simbad and see if there is a measurement. Sometimes the annotation script can also include redshift if you tick the 'write txt file' thing in the options.

Then you can get a distance with the redshift value using something like this: https://astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html

You should try the milliquas catalogue in the PI annotation script, there are some 12+ billion light year quasars in this field that i am sure you have caught with the healthy integration time you have here. I caught a few last year at just 4 hours so you definitely also will since this image goes much deeper than mine did.

Thanks, I've just looked at the SDSS catalogue....my screen is white with text! I'll have to try and whittle it down a bit to see if I can make it readable and find out what those small fuzzies are. Whilst looking into this, I also spotted another possible galaxy cluster just below M106 in amongst that group of those quasars at 12h+19m.

Speaking of quasars, I created the below image and the text file, sorted it in Excel and the largest redshift in the field is 3.741, located towards the bottom right. I haven't captured it, but I have captured the third largest in the field of 3.321. So if I'm right, using the calculator you linked, this gives 11.784 billion light years ! * My caveat with that, is I have only filled in the Z value, assuming all others are default values that need not be changed, and using the "flat" button, not "open". Not sure what the difference is, but "flat" gives a larger light year value.

I also thought there was an exceptionally bright quasar to the right of +47'20, called "NPM 1G+47.0221". Querying this in Aladin it tells me it's "LEDA 3087510 -- Galaxy", redshift of 0.067.

Fascinating!

[WolfieGlos]

3 hours ago, geeklee said:

I had a few attempts myself and still couldn't bring the full Ha signal through - although it did enough to enhance things.  Here was the Ha:

In the end I used the Continuum subtraction method but with some masking as well at the end as I couldn't get a great result.  It was only 4h Ha though (6nm, 533MM)

Wow, look at the spirals, that's great Lee. Here's what I captured during the Full Moon, and it was only 1.5 hours not the 2 that I originally said. I did use a video on YT that used pixel math to add it to the image, but I'll have a look for the method you've described and see what I can find. Thanks.

[ONIKKINEN]

1 hour ago, WolfieGlos said:

Thanks, I've just looked at the SDSS catalogue....my screen is white with text! I'll have to try and whittle it down a bit to see if I can make it readable and find out what those small fuzzies are. Whilst looking into this, I also spotted another possible galaxy cluster just below M106 in amongst that group of those quasars at 12h+19m.

Speaking of quasars, I created the below image and the text file, sorted it in Excel and the largest redshift in the field is 3.741, located towards the bottom right. I haven't captured it, but I have captured the third largest in the field of 3.321. So if I'm right, using the calculator you linked, this gives 11.784 billion light years ! * My caveat with that, is I have only filled in the Z value, assuming all others are default values that need not be changed, and using the "flat" button, not "open". Not sure what the difference is, but "flat" gives a larger light year value.

I also thought there was an exceptionally bright quasar to the right of +47'20, called "NPM 1G+47.0221". Querying this in Aladin it tells me it's "LEDA 3087510 -- Galaxy", redshift of 0.067.

Fascinating!

Some of those values you can input into the calculator are a matter of debate at the moment and its been dubbed the "crisis in cosmology" or hubble tension, and i think the default values are a few years old so might not be the currently accepted values. Long story short with the crisis is that different methods of getting that value used to be within each others margin of error but more recent measurements show that they no longer are (and some other new data shows that they actually are - its not at all clear). JWST is shedding some light to the issue, at least hopefully. Dr.Becky has made probably a dozen Youtube videos on the subject over the years with a new one every other week when more research is done with JWST data, worth a look if you're interested.

The SDSS catalogue annotation result is a huge mess, a wide (in terms of deep field stuff) field of view will just fill the screen with text. If you tick only the Milliquas catalogue the image should be more or less readable, although you'll still need to cull probably 90% of the results. If you dont see the Milliquas catalogue you can add it from the green + icon. Loads of other catalogues there too, but Milliquas is specifically only quasars.

The z 3.741 quasar has a red magnitude of 21.07 according to the Milliquas catalogue .txt file i have lying around, which i think should just about be detectable. Try giving the linear image a much larger stretch than you normally would? Wont make a pretty image for normal viewing, but the quasar is a couple of pixels anyway and you might just be able to detect it.

[WolfieGlos]

Thanks, I'm aware of the Hubble Tension but only by name, no detail so thanks for the explanation. I saw Dr Becky on Sky at Night, so I might check out her youtube videos if I get time.

9 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

The z 3.741 quasar has a red magnitude of 21.07 according to the Milliquas catalogue .txt file i have lying around, which i think should just about be detectable. Try giving the linear image a much larger stretch than you normally would? Wont make a pretty image for normal viewing, but the quasar is a couple of pixels anyway and you might just be able to detect it.

Thanks, and yes, you're right, it is there but only just.

It's there in the data, like you say with a harsh stretch straight from linear it starts to come through. I then tried running NoiseXT after this, and NoiseXT actually removed it from the image so it's not there in my final process at the start of this thread.

The 3.741 quasar is also tagged on Aladin, but the faint object just below my cursor (and the galaxies to the right) don't have any references. Similar for a lot of the faint fuzzies in this image.