Short Luminance of NGC 4038

[Atmos]

Spent the first couple of hours last night collecting some good luminance in not so good seeing conditions (wasn't horrendous but not great), tried collecting an hour or so of RGB... After the first R frame the guider decided that it had done enough work for the evening and stopped guiding. With every frame thereafter having a very slow drift and visible PE, I do have a nice single Red frame but not quite enough to make an RGB image. As I'll probably have a new camera before I can get up to do any more imaging on this target, this will probably be as far as I go for a while.

1200s x4
900s x4
600s x1 (trying to make the most of time before meridian flip!)

Has an image scale of 1.5"/pixel and seeing of about 2.7". Processing probably still leaves a bit to be desired and there is clearly a bit of noise :/ Needs more luminance. Couple of galaxies in the background, no new ones sadly :(

[RickS]

Nice catch, Colin. Some good detail in the galaxy cores.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Tough target Colin!

Getting those faint extensions on the arms.
look forward to the finished image, never been able to do any good on NGC 4038 myself.

Cheers,

Justin.

[strongmanmike]

I like this Colin, reminds me of an enhanced research grade emulsion image from a pro survey scope in the 70's :thumbsup:...and there cooould be a new galaxy in there, somewhere...you just don't know ;) :lol:

Mike

[Atmos]

Thanks Rick, the EQ6 is performing a LOT better after the regrease. Before I was struggling to get decent stars in 400s, now I am getting 20m with easy. Just need to figure out how to stop the occasional guider drop out that happens moments after I walk away to go to sleep hehe



Never even tried imaging it before, saw it with the telescope a week earlier in a 9mm eye piece and figured I'd give it a crack. I think I mostly needed better seeing, it seems I was getting better than Melbourne but still not great.
Not likely to be adding any more with my current setup, making some minor changes shortly so I'll end up starting a fresh, hopefully with better seeing next time :)



Haha Mike So I guess I now have a good 40 years to catch up on :P
I did a plate solve mostly to see if there were any fussies out there that I hadn't spotted.. They all appeared there. Not that I would expect to discover anything on a poor night with 2.5 hours with a 5" telescope :screwy:

[Placidus]

Success! A truly difficult target yielding pleasing results.

Sorry to hear about the treacherous guider.

[Atmos]

Having visually seen it the previous week with a 5" telescope (faint fuzzy) I didn't think it would be a difficult target to image. Maybe my expectations of its brightness have been skewed by various Hubble images haha

[rustigsmed]

nice work Colin, yep its a tough one from suburbia!
wouldn't mind seeing the LRGB, even if red is one sub. you can go heavy on the noise reduction for that channel :) even if you get a new camera no harm in blending the data!

Rusty