We were much inspired by Paul Haese's exquisite marathon version of NGC 3621, a half-face-on galaxy in Hydra.
Our version has just 14 hours of exposure (9 hrs 30 min of luminance and 1 hr 30 min each of RGB), taken in snatches before moonrise over the last five nights.
Apart from slight differences in colour, we are very pleased to see a quite similar galaxy to what Paul found. It is nice that there is something you can trust not to change every time you look.
A galaxy of contrasts: The core is flocculent, with only suggestions of spiral structure. The very centre does not appear especially bright. The outer spiral arms are very different: well-formed, almost grand design, but extremely faint. There is strong star formation occurring in the outer edges of the spiral arms especially toward 4 or 5 o'clock.
There is another very small grand design spiral about 50% of the way toward 12 o'clock which is worth a look, as well as the usual smattering of distant fellows.
Aspen CG16M at -30C on 20" PlaneWave on MI-750 mount. Processed with GoodLook.
Always admire your star colour Mike and Trish.. . And such a vibrant colour full galaxy.
What's going on with the green stars and green at 8 o'clock on some of the brighter stars?
Great work guys! It is an intriguing galaxy for sure and the difference in brightness between the inner regions and the arms is significant. My decon meter needle waaaas quivering in and out of the green and into the yellow zone but that's all, it didn't move anywhere near the red zone...
Always admire your star colour Mike and Trish.. . And such a vibrant colour full galaxy.
What's going on with the green stars and green at 8 o'clock on some of the brighter stars?
Lovely image!
Josh
Thanks, Josh.
The green smudge toward 8 o'clock on the bright stars is a complete mystery. We saw it in our second-most-recent galaxy shot also.
Perhaps it's time to check the filters for spider eggs, check the rim of the main mirror or the corrector lens for wasps nests. This is all to be done three metres up a wobbly ladder, and getting at the filters involves rather a lot of tight and awkward bolts, and the risk of introducing dust, so we'd be thrilled if anyone could point us in the right direction.
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Originally Posted by strongmanmike
Great work guys! It is an intriguing galaxy for sure and the difference in brightness between the inner regions and the arms is significant. My decon meter needle waaaas quivering in and out of the green and into the yellow zone but that's all, it didn't move anywhere near the red zone...
Mike
Thanks Mike. We shall consider ourselves warned that we're pushing the envelope.
That's some spectacular processing you've done there. That image really sparkles. Some real vitality and transparency achieved in this one.
I like this galaxy also and its a bit of a tough one as whilst its a spiral it seems to have some remnants of spiral arms. Perhaps its an old merged galaxy.
Well done, M&T! Great colour and I love those faint spiral arms. ...
Thanks Rick.
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Originally Posted by Joshua Bunn
... What's going on with the green stars and green at 8 o'clock on some of the brighter stars? ...
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Originally Posted by RickS
... Not sure about the green blobs but I think it's unlikely to be something on the filter since it affects bright stars all across the field.
Cheers,
Rick.
I think I might have figured out what the green blobs are. They are residual or ghost images in the green sub from the immediately previous red sub.
Examining the raw green sub, I can see that they are perfectly formed stellar images, all offset by precisely the same amount across the field on any given sub. They are not smears, nor diffraction spikes. The amount of offset varies from sub to sub.
We use a poor-man's dithering between subs. We do a focus run between subs, and rely on the scope's pointing accuracy being only of the order of 11 sec arc standard deviation. We don't explicitly dither by a large but controlled amount. We did something like 20 luminance frames, and statistical rejection effortlessly gets rid of after-images, especially after-images from the usually brilliant focus star. But with RGB, there are only three subs in each colour, and that is not enough to do anything meaningful.
Dr Mike proposes the following cure:
(1) Stop looking for wasps nests (there was one, and a big one too, but it wasn't the culprit).
(2) Dither by a larger and more controlled amount.
(3) Do more RGB frames, perhaps 6 shorter ones rather than 3 longer ones. Then our usual Winsorized mean statistical rejection technique will get rid of the blobs.
Some folk use infrared pre-flash to get rid of after images. That is important if you are doing spectra at a chip temp of -100C, but close to useless on our chip. At -30C the pre-flash hugely increases the background noise. We care much more about grit-free faint spiral arms and distant faint fuzzies than about green blobs next to the odd bright star.
Didn't occur to me that it could be RBI. I get a little on my U16M but mainly just a single ghost star after focusing. I've never seen anything that dramatic before.
We use RBI preflash on the PL16803 at SRO and the extra noise is a PITA.
I can't say I have noticed any RBI issues with my FLI16803 I use -30DegC permanently all year, I do not utilise pre flush and just dither 3 pixels and use darks (although these are probably not necessary really)
I can't say I have noticed any RBI issues with my FLI16803 I use -30DegC permanently all year, I do not utilise pre flush and just dither 3 pixels and use darks (although these are probably not necessary really)
Mike
Hi, Mike. So same chip as yours, but with ours we get two images for the price of one.
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Originally Posted by Andy01
Great image guys, lots to see and enjoy there
Thanks Andy.
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Originally Posted by multiweb
Subzero cool Mike. The field is great and the details in the main subject amazing. So many faint fuzzies around too.
Cheers, Marc. Hunting for the faint fellows can be almost as much fun as taking the main image.