Hydra Galaxy Cluster Abell 1060 22 hrs in colour

[Placidus]

The central 34 min arc of the much larger galaxy cluster Abell 1060 in Hydra.
This adds colour, and doubles the luminance, of our earlier version.

Luminance 14.5 hrs in 30 min subs. RGB 2.5 hrs each in 30 min subs.

Big one here (https://photos.smugmug.com/Category/Astrophotography-at-Placidus/i-Bzfm9Wf/0/76ebdc3e/O/Abell%201060%20L%2014h30%20RGB%202h 30%20each.jpg)


Much of the luminance was collected with pretty good seeing (1.9 sec arc) but intermittent cloud. The rest was collected on a clear night with more ordinary seeing (2.6 sec arc). The colour was collected on a very hot evening where the camera would cool to only -25C instead of our usual -30C. No moon throughout.

There are two extremely dominant foreground stars, at a wild guess red giants. Between them is a half-edge-on spiral, NGC 3312, magnitude 12, with a beautiful salmon-pink nucleus and strongly blue spiral arms showing signs of disturbance from its noisy neighbours.

Off toward 4 o'clock is the visually overlapping pair NGC 3314, not interacting but just superimposed, with the dust from the closest one obscuring the more distant of the pair.

At 5 o'clock is the intriguing NGC 3316. We see a generally amorphous galaxy with a faint but very extended halo, a bright nucleus, and three other small bright blobs which may be involved, or may be line of sight. We can find nothing about these.

The cool star at 2 o'clock, SAO 179027, magnitude 6.5, spectral class K2, appears to have much irregular cloudy material associated with it. Perhaps it is material ejected by the star. That the other, brighter star, SAO 179041, mag 5, spectral class K5, has no such material around it makes it seem less like it is an artifact.

Another interesting small and irregular galaxy underneath the large spiral looks for all the world like a blue coffee bean.

We have counted at least 224 galaxies in the image. Many are featureless ellipticals, which are much easier to pick in the colour image because of their strong orange hue. Many more are spirals showing delightful complex morphology. We were only able to find 177 in the previous single night monochrome image.

Aspen GC16M on 20 inch PlaneWave CDK on MI-750 fork. Acquisition using our own software. Processing using our own GoodLook 64.

Hope you find this area fascinating too.

Very best,
Mike and Trish

[Peter Ward]

Pristine skies, quality optics and a great imaging team.....hence a sublime result was never in question.

Nice one :thumbsup:

[Joshua Bunn]

Lovely photo! Really liking the colour profile!
Josh

[Atmos]

This image is exceptional M&T!
I give it a double :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Your wrightup is also very informative :)

[RickS]

Very cool, M&T. Like a box of rare galactic chocolates :thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

Well...rather sensational result that guys :thumbsup: That was good to surf around at full res. For the best overall pleasing view however, I actually found opening the full size image and shrinking it in my browser to 50% looked the best...eeeeexcellent :thumbsup:

...here, have one of these :prey2:

Mike :)

[Placidus]

Thanks very much Peter, that's kind.



Cheers, Josh. It's nice when the colours actually tell us something about the beasties that are lurking there.



Thanks Colin!



Celestial chocolates, yum! Thanks Rick!



Thank you so much, Mike. :) My hand hovered near the button to do one more round of deconvolution, we thought of you, and left it alone.

Very best from both of us.

[multiweb]

Wow! That's very nice Mike. :thumbsup: Great details in the faint fuzzies.

[cometcatcher]

Holy "insert expletive here". Reminds me of Hubble's deep image field.

I've go to try for that, even if I end up with a much smaller image scale.

[willik]

Very nice image Quality
Martin

[alocky]

Deep field, yet the bright star colours are beautifully preserved. As others have said, great skies, great optics, great electronics and the skill to make the most of them all.
I was having fun playing ‘spot the quasar’ with this image and the simbad database :-)
Cheers
Andrew.

[Andy01]

That's one heck-u-va good image M&T, one of your top 3 imo :thumbsup:

Absolutly marvellous as Richie would say. :lol:

So much to see as others have mentioned previously.

Have a couple of these from me too :prey2::prey2:

[strongmanmike]

Well..ok, here have three from me then :prey2::prey2::prey2:

[gregbradley]

That's a fascinating image. So many galaxies with so many stars in them. It highlights the overwhelming size of our universe.

Greg.

[Camelopardalis]

Beautiful :thumbsup:

I’m going to need a bigger scope with all this drooling...

[Paul Haese]

Bigger scale than my image and more detail as a result. Nice colour and smooth background. I went looking around and gave up at 100 galaxies. I'll take it that you have the right count. Nice image MnT.

[Placidus]

Thanks Marc.



Thanks, Kevin. It was very interesting that tripling the exposure over the first posting caused the galaxy count to increase only marginally, from 177 to 224 or so. The degree of certainty increased, as did the clarity of the morphology, but the actual count didn't increase much more.



Ta, Martin.



Thanks for the kind and thoughtful comments, Andrew. We are now inspired to go hunting for little blue dots, cattle-dog in hand.



Thanks muchly, Andy! :) We're thrilled that you like it.



Thanks Mike. That's very reassuring.



Aye, Greg. A wild guess might be something like half a trillion stars went to make up the galaxies in the image. And even if only the tiniest fraction have intelligent life ...



Cheers, Dunk. We are turning you toward the Dark Side!

Although Mike does most of the writing up, he wants to say that Trish plays an invaluable role getting motivated (look, it's clear and the wind is dropping!), in choosing the target (hey, we've not done that galaxy with the new camera), actually taking the images (she can operate the whole thing herself), or supervising me if I'm driving (you've got the lens cap on the guidescope; the focus run looks dodgy; do you really mean to do four one-second subs; the script says that the dome is closed after the first light frame), and very importantly in the colour balance, sharpness, and contrast of the final images. She is also a magnificent moral support in dark times.

Very best,

Mike

[Placidus]

Thanks, Paul. :)

[John Hothersall]

A great result, 3314 is really hard for most to image. Love the long star spikes.

John.

[Ryderscope]

A jaw dropping :jawdrop: and eye popping :eyepop:image definitely reminiscent of the Hubble deep field to be sure.

[Placidus]

Thanks, John.



Hi, Rodney, glad you like it.

It was definitely a fun and rewarding target.

[markas]

Great colour and detail. I like this one a lot.

Mark

[codemonkey]

https://i.imgflip.com/26w6rq.jpg

Great work guys, a lovely field! Thanks for sharing.

Nit picking again, but some of the stars look a bit green.

[Octane]

Simply outstanding, my friends. It's been a feast for the eyes! :)

H

[Geoff45]

Absolutely sensational guys. Colours are really great. There is a real sense of infinite depth.

[Placidus]

Thanks, Mark, glad you like it.



We can see what you mean about the green. Will investigate.



Thanks so much, Humayun, that is very encouraging.



Hi, Geoff! Lovely to see you on deck again, and thanks for the very generous comments.

Very best,
Mike and Trish

[atalas]

A wonderful deep field :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:well done again guys!

[Placidus]

We've had a closer look now. You are right that there is an issue to be fixed: a handful of the brighter stars have assymetrical green fringes, especially a green smudge toward bottom right of the star. It's not overall colour balance: reducing the green channel strength hopelessly messes up the colour balance for the image as a whole. Looking at the faintest stars, the registration of R, G, and B on the great bulk of fainter stars seems pretty accurate, so it's not a registration error. We could apply a finger-painting cosmetic fix, but that would be wicked and sinful. We throw up our hands in dismay. Please avert your gaze, and enjoy the galaxies!



Thanks Louie!

Best,
Mike, Trish, and Kermit

[codemonkey]

Hey guys,

First of all I want to reiterate that it's a great image, no question about it, as attested by all the other comments in this thread.

Since moving to a newt and dealing with errant star shapes for months I think I've become hypersensitive to stars. I've looked back at some of my own data since and been amazed that I hadn't noticed issues that are clearly obvious to me now.

Could also be a difference in monitor calibration, though I did calibrate mine recently and I'm sure you guys have done the same.

Anyway, I wouldn't lose sleep over it and I hope I didn't offend. I tend not to post too much on other people's images because usually I have nothing to offer other than "great work"... I do try to offer what I see as opportunity for improvement, even if slight as I feel like that adds some value.

Cheers,
Lee

[Placidus]

Thanks for the reassurance, Lee, but no, we were honoured that you had looked carefully at the image. We're still wondering about what went wrong. Dirty optics? One sub where the green tracking went wrong? We've been putting all our efforts elsewhere with a long run of moonlit but crystal clear nights. What a great excuse for laziness!

[strongmanmike]

Don't ya juuust love it when the crystal clear nights are so beautifully lit by the Full Moon.....NOT :mad2:

Mike :P

[SimmoW]

Superb team, so deep and unusual.

I wonder if you can teach me, are all those redder galaxies that colour due to red shift? Or just because of a predominance of older stars? Cool stuff!

[Placidus]

It's been even clearer, and no wind, over the last three nights of totally full moon. So we went out and howled.



Thanks Simon! Just a guess, but I think that the ellipticals are red mostly because they are very old and have run out of free gas for making new stars. To be noticeably red because of red shift, they'd have to be at least a couple billion light years away (ie small compared with 13.4 billion), and therefore at least a thousand times further away than M32 at 2.5 million, and therefore only a pixel across and too small and too faint to see. It would be interesting if someone has a more solid answer.

Happy Easter,
Mike