Toss a coin

[Slawomir]

Hi all,

While dreaming of a larger aperture, as most of us do, I thought of having another go at one of the larger galaxies with my 105mm guidescope. Data was acquired over a couple of weeks and it adds up to just over 2 days worth of exposure, so I pushed the histogram pretty hard.

I could not get PI to get Photometric Colour Calibration tool to do a reasonable job, so I was left to manually push the controls. From the final result, I see I certainly have some way to go in the department of LRGB processing.

Full resolution version: https://a4.pbase.com/o12/75/1404475/1/170976464.799ETja5.NGC_253.jpg

Thank you for looking :hi:

[PaulSthcoast]

Suavi,

That is an amazing image !

Thanks for sharing.

Paul.

[Atmos]

Fair number of galaxies in the field which you’ve done well to capture, exposure time definitely helps in that regard :thumbsup:

[codemonkey]

Super cool Suavi, great to see you leveraging your darker skies and getting some broadband data! I love the little background fuzzies that Colin pointed out too.

[gregbradley]

A wonderful image Suavi.
CFF scopes rock!

You got the outer halo which is not often shown.
Your colour looks quite accurate to me.

Greg

[DavidTrap]

Impressive - lot of detail there, regardless of the size of your scope.

I had issues with PI colour calibration on a few recent images. It's previously been good. I don't do enough processing to give a considered opinion though...

DT

[strongmanmike]

Bright, colourful and deep, looks great Suavi.....while just a few short years ago it was non existent in images of this galaxy, now an image of this regularly hit big bright galaxy, is not truuuuly excellent, unless it shows that faint outer halo ;) :thumbsup:

Mike

[John K]

Wow that's a great image!

John K.

[LewisM]

Nice I image from that guidescope. Mine is a mini-guidescope :)

[Slawomir]

Thank you Paul - much appreciate your kind feedback.



Thank you Colin. Accumulated just a smidgen past 50 hours of 10-minute subs.



Thank you Lee - I was hesitant to trying again galaxy with such small aperture, but as you wrote - I should start taking advantage of decently dark skies in our small town.



Thank you Greg. I got the background noise down to 4 ADUs (st.dev.), it certainly helped in showing a few fainter aspects. Nearly happy with CCD's orthogonality - not an easy thing at f/4.5 with a short focal length.



Thank you David. With a few counted LRGB attempts I have made to date, I never got PI photometric colour calibration to give a reasonable colour balance. Maybe something to do with the amount of data?



Thank you Mike - trying to follow footsteps of great galaxy imagers like yourself :thumbsup:



Thank you John - glad you like my attempt.



Thank you Lewis. Your guidescope produces top notch data :thumbsup:

[multiweb]

Very nice field. :thumbsup:

[vlazg]

Excellent rendition Suavi, great result for a reasonably “small “ aperture. 😎

[Slawomir]

Thank you Marc and George for your encouragement :hi:

[Paul Haese]

The galaxy looks really nice Suavi. Not sure about the stars though. Something funky going on with them. However the star of the show is the galaxy for sure.

[Slawomir]

Thank you Paul. I agree that stars are a bit funky - having a bit of a trouble taming my Riccardi reducer. But imaging at f/4.5 with a refractor allows me to go quite deep within reasonable time, so I will stick with it for the time being.

[glend]

I like it Suavi. A little fuzzy but the colour seems fine to me.

[Placidus]

All the good things the others have said, plus: Lots and lots of very distant galaxies that are out of field in a larger aperture.

There is "something" about 85 or 90% of the way to the bottom left corner which could just possibly be a cluster of very distant galaxies.

We like the star colours too.

[Slawomir]

Glad you like it Glen.

Thank you Mike and Trish. I have noticed that potential cluster too - I am starting to get a taste for LRGB imaging, as the horizon extends so much much further than in narrowband!

[LewisM]

ey Suavi, when you sell that guidescope, give a cooee :P

[Ryderscope]

A great show of this fine object Suavi.