NGC4038 - Antenna Galaxies

[Ryderscope]

I am a little late to the table with my rendition of this very picturesque pair of interacting galaxies for this season. This of course has provided me the opportunity to 'stand on the shoulders of giants' who have come before :D :einstein:

A number of challenges were presented during image capture with some very pesky gradients which would appear to have resulted from a nearby mag 5 star plus some seriously ugly seeing. I finished junking all of the luminance subs but I don't think that the image suffered because of it.

Given the dynamic range difference from the core to the outer arms/antenna, it was always going to be a challenge trying to capture this in a 5" refractor with a 1.5 degree FOV. To help with alleviating this, a little over 60 subs per channel were captured at 10 minutes per exposure. This has helped with achieving a reasonable SNR.

Link to image on Astrobin here. (https://astrob.in/9srmui/B/)
Click on image in Astrobin for larger resolution.

[Placidus]

Wow! You've done an astonishing job! The Astrobin version kept us amazed for ages. Sharp as a pin and very deep. The foreground stars sparkle like jewels. The background is very clean, but the faintest details are all there.

Best,
MnT

[PeterSEllis]

Hi Rodney,
That is a lovely shot of NGC4038/4039, a nice one to add too your collection, it doesn't get much better than that.

Cheers
Peter

[Ryderscope]

Thanks MnT, Peter. There was a lot of time spent on this one both in data collection and processing.

[gregbradley]

A very beautiful image. That turned out superbly.

Greg.

[strongmanmike]

Very nice result on this famous pair Rod, well done :thumbsup:

Really quite an amazing tango gong on there huh?

Mike

[markas]

Great image:thumbsup:
Very clean and sharp!


Mark

[Andy01]

That's come up well Rodney, lovely image :thumbsup:

[Ryderscope]

Thanks Greg, Mike, Mark & Andy. They do certainly make for a great visual treat and are an excellent example/display of interacting galaxies.

[marc4darkskies]

Nicely done Rodney! Those faint arms can be a challenge but you've rendered them very well!

[Ryderscope]

Thanks for that Marcus. The additional effort with exposure times certainly helped to catch the fainter details.

Clear skies.

[Paul Haese]

Nice image Rodney, 32 hours is very good. Colour is rather pleasing too.

[Ryderscope]

Thanks Paul. I did need to push out the acquisition time with this object and it definitely helped.

[marc4darkskies]

Very nice job Rodney. You should be happy with that! :thumbsup:

[Bart]

This is a lovely image, seems nicely processed and good colours.

[topheart]

Very very well done!!
Cheers,
Tim

[Ryderscope]

Many thanks lads, much appreciated.

[Ryderscope]

I am most pleased that this image has won the Open Deep Space section of the 2020 "Capture the Cosmos - Under the Warrumbungle Sky" competition. We all put a lot of hard work and time into capturing and processing the data for our images so it is nice to win an award as well.

Clear skies,
Rodney

[Andy01]

Congratulations Rodney, well done! 😊

[Peter Ward]

Nicely done Rodney...and congrats on the Coona win....was the image taken from Coona or Bathurst?

Either location would run rings around Southern Sydney...but last time I checked Mt Panorama was not under Coonabarabran skies...hence I figured the Astrobin location didn't make much sense. :shrug:

[Ryderscope]

Thanks, much appreciated. This image was taken from my home observatory at Glanmire which is 15kms east of Bathurst. There was only one of the categories for the competition that had to be taken in the Warrumbungles which was their "Warrumbungle Nightscapes" section.

[Peter Ward]

That makes perfect sense then! There is a quality to refractor images that allows them to punch well above their weight and congrats once again. :thumbsup: