Ngc6744

[barx1963]

Some data from last week. NGC6744 in Pavo. Lovely barred spiral with a ring around the core. Image was framed to grab the 4 background or companion galaxies. This object has fairly low surface brightness so is quite difficult to process. had 4 goes at getting a result I am moderately happy with. Consists of 16x5mins of L and 14 x 5mins each of RG and B.

Camera ZWO ASI1600MM Pro
Filters Baader LRGB
Scope Celestron Edge HD 8" scope with 0.7 reducer,
Focuser Moonlite Litecrawler focuser,
Guiding with ASI290MM Mini and ZWO OAG and PHD2,
Mount Orion AZ/EQ-G
Captured with SGP and processed in Pixinsight

Malcolm

[PKay]

Nice one Malcolm.

Quick question: Would this galaxy benefit from some Ha thrown in?

[alpal]

Hi Malcom,
nice work for a small amount of data.
I would be tempted to push it harder in the color saturation.


cheers
Allan

[barx1963]

Yeah, I tried a bit more saturation, but results were not good IMHO. Someone with more skills than I may be able to do it!
I am trying to do images without going crazy on collecting data. A lot of newcomers to our hobby are put off by thinking that you need dozens of hours of data and then days of processing to make decent images.
I am trying to keep acquisition and processing within reasonable time frames. Just under 5 hours collected over 2 nights but spent way too much time processing. My other recent images of the South Pillars in Eta Car was only 2.5 hours total data and about an hour processing (not counting the Batch Preprocessing time in Pixinsight that ran while I was in bed!)
These images are definitely not APODS, but represent a reasonable level of result vs time committed.


Malcolm

[barx1963]

Probably, took a couple of Ha subs but very little there. My efforts at blending Ha and LRGB have been somewhat unsuccessful to date. Will try again in the future!!

Malcolm

[Ken]

Nine image, your .7 reducer might need a few mm increase to the camera as the stars are a little stretched in the corners. Some misalignment of colour in the bright stars might be from this as well.
Clear skies Ken.

[Placidus]

Nicely done. It is a mongrel to process even with big gear because of its low surface brightness. We can see the four friends.

[strongmanmike]

I'm with you on this Malcolm, sometimes I do like to just hit something with a few hours total, 1/2 a night say? Having to do multiple nights on objects can indeed be a damn pain. The trick to facilitate this I guess, is to just pick really bright objects..like globs, open clusters and nice bright nebs :thumbsup:

Mike

[rustigsmed]

nice work Malcolm, i love this galaxy and never gotten around to imaging it yet. also if you're going for minimal data, look into topaz denoise ai, it does a an amazing job of lowering noise particularly in the low signal areas. I really think its a complete game changer.