Ngc 300

[marco]

Hi everyone, during the Christmas break I processed a new image of another galaxy in the sculptor, in this case it is NGC300, a galaxy rather generous in size but with a lower surface brightness than the nearby NGC253.

NGC 300 (Full Res) (https://www.glitteringlights.com/Images/Galaxies/i-szQww24/A)

As it was with NGC253 this field is also full of background galaxies which is one of the things I like most of this image. I added some H-alpha exposures to increase the visibility of the many HII regions scattered a bit all over the galaxy disc.

About 15 hours of total exposure, other details are reported on the image's link. My slow re-learning of the elaboration process continues: D

Clear skies
Marco

[Andy01]

Nice one Marco, I don't photograph as many galaxies as I'd like to, but when I photographed this one I gave it 30+hrs because it's so dim!

The extra Ha you added really makes those tiny nebulae pop :thumbsup:

Nice to explore all those little feint fuzzies in the background too :D

Cheers
Andy

[strongmanmike]

Lovely field and excellent colour Marco, the HII regions really stand out :thumbsup: It's a lovely image but the stars look just a tad bloated and soft :confuse3: looks great panned out but the close up version is where it looks like this. Was this an atmospheric effect or is this just a by product of the optical design?...or am I imagining things :question:

Mike

[marco]

Thanks Andy!



Hi Mike, there are still some optimization I have to do, including some further tweaking of the plane perpendicularity and probably add an Atlas focuser to the imaging train (I suspect moving the secondary as I am doing is not precise enough with the critical f/ratio of the scope). However I am also struggling with the seeing in Coona, at least in my location. When I analyze my subframes for this luminance I got FWHM between 2.6" and 4.6", depending on the night. The former tenant of my dome using his TEC180 had the same issue with his scope and I also experienced mediocre seeing in the past using the TEC140 (but with the latter I was imaging with almost half of the current sampling so this wasn't a big issue).
Usually in winter I experience better seeing, for the past few weeks it was quite so-so. Than of course processing could also worsening it a bit..
If you want to give it a try I would be happy to share my luminance stack, as I said with my NGC253 post I got quite rusty on image processing..

Cheers
Marco

[Bart]

That is lovely, Marco. Top job.

[Atmos]

Beautifully tiny stars everywhere!

[Paul Haese]

Good to see you back Marco. I love the colour. Detail is good in the core too.

[topheart]

Lovely colour and a very pleasing image Marco!
Regards,
Tim

[codemonkey]

Lovely image, Marco, very well done! I imaged this target a bit over 4yrs ago now and wasn't happy with my result... I found it to be a tough target. I don't see any signs of struggle in your image, it looks easy!



Wait... the luminance data for this was 2.6" - 4.6"? For real? That's a sensational processing effort given that starting point.

[marco]

Thank you all for your comments!

Hi Lee, yes the final average FWHM of the stack was 3.35", so not really ideal. I managed to reduce it to 2.35" thru deconvolution, however still not ideal to get as many details as I wanted. As I posted before, I suspect I need to upgrade the focusing system in order to improve it and also to work a bit more on the orthogonality of the CCD plane. Unfortunately between smoke and dust followed by adverse weather conditions I could not do any imaging on the last 10 days so I hope to have some chances next days. To add a focuser on the imaging train unfortunately is going to take longer..
Clear skies
Marco