An average NGC 7424 - RGB ADDED

[marc4darkskies]

In the spirit of making lemonade from the lemons of poor seeing I whinged about in my last post a month ago, I decided to add RGB to my luminance after all. This is now 16.25 hours of LRGB cropped slightly and reduced to 70% to compensate for seeing induced artefacts.

One thing's certain, while it's quite photogenic, this is tough target - especially when good nights around here are so scarce! Note that the glare at the top right of the full frame is from the yellow 6.7 mag HIP 113240 - just out of frame.

70% Full scale:
http://www.pbase.com/gailmarc/image/164220403/original

[RickS]

Very pretty, Marcus. It certainly is a tough target but it turned out well.

Cheers,
Ricl.

[gregbradley]

I think you have done very well there Marcus. As you say this is indeed a difficult target and extremely dim.

Lots of Ha knots there as well.

Greg.

[Stevec35]

Looks pretty respectable to me Marcus. Very nice colour.

Cheers

Steve

[marc4darkskies]

Cheers Rick!



Thanks Greg! This is as good as it gets with the data at hand - but it's respectable.



Thanks Steve! I gathered 2 hours each for R, G & B. That seemed to be enough to get some colour onto the faint bits.

[Placidus]

Excellent!

[Atmos]

Very nice Marcus! Doesn't quite have that "clarity" that you're looking for but we can only work with the skies we're dealt :) Not a galaxy I am familiar with but it certainly looks active!

[alpal]

Hi Marcus,
that's a good result on a magnitude 11 target.
Your supreme optics are limited by the seeing.
It's hard to find better unless you go to CHART 32.

cheers
Allan

[marc4darkskies]

Thanks M&T!



Cheers Colin. What I don't have in sharpness I tried to make up for in colour. There's certainly plenty going on in there and I was happy to see the HII regions showing up so well.



You're too kind Allan - a couple of others on IIS have also produced sharper and deeper versions than mine. A few nights of sub 2 arcsec seeing would be nice once in a while! :help:

[alpal]

I've had sub 2 arcsec seeing only once in 5 years in Melbourne
& that was with an Ha filter.
One night it went to 7 arcsec & I had to pack up the telescope. :(

cheers
Allan

[strongmanmike]

Nice final result Marcus...the seeing will come your way... eventually :thumbsup:

Mike

[Regulus]

While it might not be the image you want Marcus, it's still a damn fine NGC7424. And you can always think of it as practice for that special night.
I like it.
Trev

[marc4darkskies]

Cheers Mike ... I hope you're right!



Thanks Trev! Much appreciated!

[Shiraz]

very nice work Marcus. It is a difficult object and you have a fine image of it - good result.

[marc4darkskies]

Thanks Ray!

[PRejto]

That is quite nice Marcus. I'm attempting the same target but I'm coming to the conclusion that my sky is just too bright to finish what I've started.

Peter

[marc4darkskies]

Thank you kindly Peter! Yep, very low surface brightness this one. I'd be curious to see what you can get though.

[PRejto]

Marcus, I've played around with my 14 hours of luminance. If you don't mind I can just put a link here. Let me know. It's not something I want to leave up on my site....at least not yet. Even after 14 hours/dithered and some smoothing attempt the background is pretty shabby. I did manage some detail though.

Peter