ngc2442 the Meathook

[Shiraz]

Hi

The sky has been pretty bright with haze lately and there were some hideous gradients in the colour data due to strong local lighting, so to get something usable was great :). Image has been heavily cropped - mainly to remove the worst of the remaining gradient regions. I had to do a final colour balance by eye and my eyes are fairly old, so any feedback on colour would be helpful. Will get some Ha next moon and try to work out a good way to blend it in - haven't tried any method yet that I like.

Seeing was about 2.5 arcsec and variable, but about 2/3 of the subs were OK.

Thanks for looking. Regards ray

200f4 Newtonian on EQ6, H694 (at -5C) and RCC1 corrector. 200 sec subs for everything. about 3 hours for lum and an hour each for RGB

EDIT: reworked image to lower red background as noted by Greg

[gregbradley]

Spectacular image Ray. Such great detail and great framing and composition.

Colourwise there is a small amount of red in the background so I would suggest knocking the reds back in the shadow areas using the colour balance tool.

Greg.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Great stuff Ray!:thumbsup:

Still think I'm looking at an image from a 12" astrograph, just amazing it's from an 8"!

Colour looks good to me, and I see what Greg means about the background, didn't really notice till he pointed it out.

Cheers,

Justin.

[Astroman]

Nice image Ray, didn't know that little fella was there, cool! one for the dark sky I think....

[alpal]

Hi Ray,
Wow - magnitude 11 & you pulled most of the arms out of the noise.
Even better in that it's maximum elevation is only 58 degrees.
Is your site semi dark?

well done.

cheers
Allan

[marc4darkskies]

Very nice Ray! :thumbsup:

What's with the apparent CA obvious on the bright stars? Mis-registration?

Cheers,
Marcus

[Shiraz]

thanks Greg. Will reprocess when I have had some sleep.



thanks Justin. This scope seems to be able to get down close to the seeing limit most of the time. I am in the process of working up a 10 inch, which will provide larger image scale and possibly better resolution if the seeing is really good and I can get rid of all the mechanical bugs in the new scope.


Hi Andrew. Thanks.


Thanks very much Allan. This site is in a rural town, which could be good. However, a couple of ks to the south is a large grain silo, the exterior of which is always lit for some purpose?? (mercury lighting I think) plus a dolomite crushing plant that puts out huge amounts of sodium light. If the transparency is high, it's pretty good, but it can be a real trial if there is some haze around and the target is in the south.


Thanks Marcus. Long story so apologies:
1. the scope tube is too small for imaging and the support bits for the secondary spider can intrude into the light column if the secondary is even slightly misaligned, causing diffraction
2. the scope was being used with a temporary secondary while the glue set on a new one - I did not get around to aligning it perfectly, so there were asymmetric diffraction skirts around the stars.
3. I carried out a meridian flip half way through the colour data so the stars have differing diffraction skirts, depending on when they were imaged. The result is the apparent CA on the bright stars when the data is stretched.

won't do a meridian flip in the middle of colour data again :P - maybe I should reprocess to get rid of it - shouldn't be impossible. Working up a new scope so this should be a thing of the past - I hope

regards ray

[RickS]

Nice work, Ray! Looks like a dim and tricky target.

[Shiraz]

thanks Rick. the old bloke who took it could probably also be described by the same adjectives. regards ray

[strongmanmike]

So here was that dilemma again, what and how much to discard huh? Well, hat ever you did it looks pretty good :thumbsup:.

Actually I was looking to shoot this myself next :)...I'll see :thumbsup:

Mike

[Shiraz]

thanks Mike. It's a really pretty thing - hope you do get it, be nice to see what a higher quality system can do with it. Ray

[Stevec35]

Very nice meathook Ray!

Cheers

Steve

[strongmanmike]

Weeell actually... I recon it is a kinda ugly galaxy really :shrug: and I have always passed her by but I realised I can fit several elliptical galaxies in the field with her if I frame her right :)

[Shiraz]

thanks Steve.



yes, there are quite a few interesting close companions - I got them, but they live in a world of bad gradients in my image and I cannot rescue them. there is also a lot of extension around the galaxy itself that would be worth getting if you can go deep enough.

regards ray

[Lee]

Nice work, I've always liked this galaxy, you've captured it well Ray....

[David Fitz-Henr]

That's a very nice image of an interesting object Ray :thumbsup: You've brought out the detail well! I'll have to add it to my To-do list.

[multiweb]

That's a beauty Ray. Nicely done. :thumbsup:

[LucasB]

Nice shot Ray. A target to definitely add to the list even though it is a little low here in Melbourne.:thumbsup:
Lucas

[Lee]

At -69deg declination, you should have no probs in Melbourne....

[Shiraz]

Hi Lee. I agree that it's one of the more interesting galaxies. Some of the web images are spectacular.



Thanks very Much David - should be a good target for your big scope.



Thanks Marc. Having a lot of fun with the little scope :)



Thanks Lucas - look forward to your image of it

regards Ray