Ngc 3621

[codemonkey (Lee)]

A pretty challenging target, this one has some very faint arms. Over 9hrs of data was shot over the past few nights, with much of the luminance captured under a near-full moon which isn't terribly conductive to imaging faint stuff. I've also under-stated the processing somewhat, favouring smaller, better stars and core detail over bringing out all the faint stuff.

Seeing was reasonably good, average for the lum was just shy of 2.2"

Full res / captured details available on Astrobin here

[topheart]

Hi Lee,
That's a very nicely done galaxy.
Cheers,
Tim

[alan meehan (Alan)]

Nice capure LEE well worth the effort
ALAN

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Lee, that's exquisite. Beautifully captured and processed.

[RickS (Rick)]

Nice detail and colour, Lee.

[alpal]

Hi Lee,
75 Luminance subframes - almost 1/9th of the noise!
Great work to capture that.
I am surprised that you got such a fantastic image from only a 120mm aperture.

cheers
Allan

[codemonkey (Lee)]

Updated the OP with a reprocess. Did slightly better on the stars due to a new trick I just discovered, slightly less oversharpened, and a slightly tighter crop. Original version is still on Astrobin, as well as the new revision.

Originally Posted by topheart

Hi Lee,
That's a very nicely done galaxy.
Cheers,
Tim

Thanks very much Tim, glad you like it

Originally Posted by alan meehan

Nice capure LEE well worth the effort
ALAN

Thanks Alan, appreciate it!

Originally Posted by Placidus

Lee, that's exquisite. Beautifully captured and processed.

Thanks very much Mike! It's a tough one, and while I haven't gone as deep as Ray and others have done, I'm still pretty happy with it.

Originally Posted by RickS

Nice detail and colour, Lee.

Thanks Rick :-)

Originally Posted by alpal

Hi Lee,
75 Luminance subframes - almost 1/9th of the noise!
Great work to capture that.
I am surprised that you got such a fantastic image from only a 120mm aperture.

cheers
Allan

Thanks very much Allan :-) Small pixels combined with reasonable seeing let you do a reasonable job with a 120mm refractor. Never going to get the same resolution as a nice big scope though...

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Nice result Lee with good colour fidelity, yes the outer arms on this baby are rather faint.

Mike

[Regulus (Trevor)]

That's a nice result Lee. A very pleasant image. Detail and colour is satisfying. Well done.

Trevor

[codemonkey (Lee)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Nice result Lee with good colour fidelity, yes the outer arms on this baby are rather faint.

Mike

Thanks Mike; I found your version of this one -- you definitely managed a much better job in terms of bringing out those arms. Nice work mate.

Originally Posted by Regulus

That's a nice result Lee. A very pleasant image. Detail and colour is satisfying. Well done.

Trevor

Thanks Trevor :-)

[Shiraz (Ray)]

this is a desperately tricky galaxy to image - nicely done Lee.

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

This is a hard one to process Lee. You've done well, but if you could bring out the faint outer arms a bit more it would really add to the image. Not easy. I gave up on this one a year or two ago.

[codemonkey (Lee)]

Originally Posted by Shiraz

this is a desperately tricky galaxy to image - nicely done Lee.

Thanks Ray - it is a tricky one indeed.

Originally Posted by Geoff45

This is a hard one to process Lee. You've done well, but if you could bring out the faint outer arms a bit more it would really add to the image. Not easy. I gave up on this one a year or two ago.

Thanks Geoff :-) I've played around a bit but haven't been able to pull much more out of it without compromising other stuff. Not helping is the less than ideal conditions for much of the data and some bad flats that have left some patterns that become more obvious if I try and stretch it further.