Galactic Merger. NGC 6769, 6770, 6771

[furgle]

Note the interesting hexagonal ring around NGC 6771. Elliptical galaxy IC 4842 is shown in the bottom-left of the frame.



Better resolution:

https://observatory.site/astrophotography/Colliding_Galaxies_NGC6769_NGC6770_ NGC6771/


Annotated:

https://imgur.com/a/UdGjh3q

Image:


102x 300s luminance
33x 300s red
31x 300s green
28x 300s blue

Total integration 16 hours 10 minutes.


Hardware:


Celestron 11" EdgeHD
Skywatcher EQ8 Pro mount
QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
Astronomik luminance, deep sky RGB filters
Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
Starlight Xpress Active Optics
Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II

Location:


Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
Imaged over 3 nights. New Moon.

Software:


Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 10
Captured with TheSkyX Professional
Guiding with PHD2
FocusLock live focusing
PixInsight: calibrate, align, stack, crop, dynamic background extraction, light deconvolution, noise reduction, stretch, curves.

[Placidus]

Bravo, Adam!

You've got those intriguing dust lanes that have been dragged up over the combatants.

Extra good.

[astroron]

Nice one Adam:thumbsup:
I observe this group quite often in the 16"
A Supernova was discovered in NGC6769 at
The at the Queensland Astrofest by Brendon Downs
in the mid 1990's.
Well done with those dust lanes,I have not seen them images before.
Cheers:thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

A pretty nice result there Adam, on what is one of my favourite (perhaps even favourite :question:) galaxy groupings :thumbsup:

It's also known as The Devils Mask

Mike