NGC 7741 - barred spiral galaxy in Pegasus imaged with a 10'' newtonian

[ONIKKINEN]

NGC 7741 - a rarely imaged magnitude 11 barred spiral galaxy 40 million light years away in the constellation of Pegasus. Searching this forum results in no posted images, so this may be a first in SGL, Astrobin doesn't have too many entries either so this target seems to be a bit off the beaten path.

390 x 120s to a total of 13 hours:

Taken over the last 3 nights with a TS ONTC 10''f/4 newtonian, RisingCam IMX571 OSC camera and a TeleVue Paracorr. Sky conditions between SQM 20.9 and 21.1 so the data is pretty good. Presented at the full capture resolution of 0.67''/px. Seeing was very good for the first 2 nights and a bit softer but still good for the third night. Heavy fog on the first 2 nights so not all the captured data made it into the stack.

Calibration/stacking in Siril, Processing in Siril, Pixinsight, and Photoshop.

Feedback welcome!

-Oskari

Edited 12 hours ago by ONIKKINEN

[wimvb]

Nice! I wonder if there are H-alpha regions in those blue arms. In my experience, spending a night capturing H-alpa usually pays off.

[TiffsAndAstro]

This is a very cool image

[CraigT82]

Very very nice. Photogenic subject, lots of faint fuzzies and wonderful stars…. Excellent work! 

[AstroDad74]

Nice image 

[ONIKKINEN]

2 hours ago, wimvb said:

Nice! I wonder if there are H-alpha regions in those blue arms. In my experience, spending a night capturing H-alpa usually pays off.

I tested stretching and over saturating the red channel, and you are probably right. The central bar and surroundings have strong swirls of red, and some of the sharper specks of light in the arms have a bit of magenta/red. Not clear evidence of Ha, but a suggestion that there probably is.

Will point the scope here again with an ALP-T at some point. Probably when the Moon returns, i dont like spending dark hours on non-broadband stuff.

[ONIKKINEN]

2 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

Very very nice. Photogenic subject, lots of faint fuzzies and wonderful stars…. Excellent work! 

Thanks. Surprised how much the 10" pulled out of the sky, after all this is a tiny speck of the sky at around 20 arc minutes in diameter. The faint spiral galaxy at around 4 o clock from the galaxy (the one above the bright star) is more than 1.1 Billion light years away! Some quasars are lurking in this field too, forgot to post an annotated image in my haste to set off to image for the 4th night in a row. Its a good problem to have and a first since 2020.

[woldsman]

That’s a great image. Particularly like the bar in the galaxy. Thanks for posting.

[900SL]

That's some rig there Oskari. Hope this weather continues, I am getting amazing seeing right now on the Eastern Veil 

[WolfieGlos]

Very nice image, details in the spiral and lovely colours.

[ONIKKINEN]

1 hour ago, 900SL said:

That's some rig there Oskari. Hope this weather continues, I am getting amazing seeing right now on the Eastern Veil 

Seeing has been exceptionally stable for me too, Declination is basically not being guided at all and stays still. Which is a good thing, havent sorted out guiding with the new enormous scope yet. On the Fireworks galaxy at the moment, HFR around 3px, which is beyond superb at 1160mm focal length.

Edited 5 hours ago by ONIKKINEN