[Paul Haese]

I am currently working on NGC55 and have spent a bit of time examining the Ha and luminance data. Images I have seen on the web don't appear to show some things I have noticed in the Ha data. I suspect this is because the amount of integration is smaller than I have collected so far. Or this data is so faint that it just does not show through when combined with the brighter LRGB data.

So far I have taken 510 minutes of Ha and only 20 minutes of luminance. The Ha is the most interesting to me. Near the central core I can now see some very large loops which extend out a little from the top and bottom of the lanes. There are also many small bubbles along the entire length of the galaxy which are quite faint and these have become more visible with increasing integration. My plan is to increase integration to see if I can make these faint objects visible in an integrated image. I don't think I will do 50 hours on the Ha, however for now I will do double of what I have and then see how much more definition I can get. I'll also go fairly deep on the LRGB too to bring out the faint background galaxies and to give a very pleasing colour image.

My thinking here is that all my best images have had colour data greater than 4 hours per channel and with very deep luminance. In fact nearly all my images with greater than 30 hours present cleaner and more vibrancy. I have noted over the years that guys such as Rolf Olsen take a similar approach which has confirmed my thinking.

I think this is an interesting experiment, perhaps showing the gas loops for the first time. I have included both Ha and luminance images for comparison.

Feel free to discuss.