NGC3718/3729 and Hickson 56

[GordonH]

Hi

Normally I don't do galaxies or star clusters as it involves RGB imaging and that is very difficult from where I live because of the light pollution but as the emission nebulae are moving out of target range for a couple of months I thought I would give this target a try as the sky was clear even though there was a half moon in the sky and gradually rising fog during the evening which eventually called a stop to proceedings at about 2am by which time you couldn't see any detail in the galaxy on the downloads. I took this with the the Takahashi FSQ106ED and Starlight Xpress SXVF M8C (OSC camera with 3.15 micron pixels), I managed to get 14x20 minutes (should have used longer subframes for this pixel size in hindsight) and it was taken through a clear filter (the luminance filter on my filter wheel), getting a guide star was pretty tricky using the OAG and I had to lengthen the guide exposures to 5 seconds binned 2x2 and even then the guide star was very faint, after crossing the meridian and doing a flip this was fine though as a brighter one was present. The image looks a bit soft and fuzzy which I suspect is partly due to the fog but this gives me something to aim for when I try it agan with the H9 and filters hopefully under better conditions. A full resolution image is available on one of my websites Gordon Haynes's Photo Galleries at pbase.com

Thanks for looking

Best wishes

Gordon

[peter shah]

that lovely gordon super detail in the core:cool:

[johnh]

This is a great group with ots going on, your field is a little wide but core is developing nicely and arms are difficult to get as they are so faint.

John.

[Beyond_Vision]

Thats very nice Gordon with some good detail at core. It would be well worth adding more data if you get chance

Regards

Kevin

[GordonH]

Hi Guys

Thanks for the comments, I have tweaked the image to reduce some of the background noise

Best wishes

Gordon

[adamsp123]

Nice image Gordon with some good detail emerging, the second does look better with the smoother background

[Astroscot2]

Its an interesting galaxy would like ot see this imaged with a longer focal length.

Gordon we all suffer from light pollution, part and parcel of RGB imaging from this country im afraid.