The Pavo Galaxy - NGC 6744 (added a core close up)
With clear nights with no Moon, work or family commitments getting in the road not exactly in abundance..aaand being inherently laaazy ...I decided to move away from tiny planetary nebs and shoot something I could nab reasonably well in a single night..and I just managed to squeeeeze this in one
So to get the annual NGC 6744 season rolling... here she is
As most would know this galaxy has a rather low surface brightness, especially those outer really faint arms that spread a fair way out from the main body of the galaxy so, as always, I tried to reveal as much as possible while keeping the relative brightnesses accurate with global stretching only.
A higher contrast stretch of the over 6hrs of Luminance data shows the extent of the very faintest outer spiral arms and details and even some very faint Milky Way cirrus dust.
Great work Mike! I've imaged that once before and that's an excellent result, even more so for one night of data. What's the sky like where this was captured? Dark?
I've been planning on having another shot at this soon, just been waiting for it to get high enough. Although, it's a toss up, do I redo this or have a crack at Barnard's galaxy?
Thanks Al ..and Don's was 17.5hrs taken from Coona with a 20" CDK too
Quote:
Originally Posted by codemonkey
Great work Mike! I've imaged that once before and that's an excellent result, even more so for one night of data. What's the sky like where this was captured? Dark?
I've been planning on having another shot at this soon, just been waiting for it to get high enough. Although, it's a toss up, do I redo this or have a crack at Barnard's galaxy?
Cheers Lee, my skies are quite good, about Bortel 3.5 overall but much darker to the North and West
Well, Barnards galaxy sits in a very faint but beautiful field of faint striated Milky Way dust...so I recon have a shot for that!
Thanks for posting Mike. A great example of NGC 6744. I will use this as a benchmark for data I'm capturing on this object at the moment.
I see that there is no Ha data included. Does this mean that there is none worth bothering with for this object?
Cheers Rod, I did consider getting some Ha but I ran out of time (would have had to stretch it to two nights ) ...may still get some yet, still, was happy with the general colour distribution revealed within the galaxy none the less.
not exactly in abundance..aaand being inherently laaazy 
...I decided to move away from tiny planetary nebs and shoot something I could nab reasonably well in a single night..and I just managed to squeeeeze this in one 
The fine spiralling dust lanes close in to the core are amazing.
...great song....
