Grus Spiral Trio 2: 7162A and friends

[Placidus]

Three very different galaxies in Grus. NGC 7162A toward top left is a distorted face-on spiral undergoing a burst of star formation and is noticeably blue. NGC 7166 is a large (and presumably more distant) elliptical, red, featureless. NGC 7162 to the right is a more typical half-face-on spiral.

Full field here (https://photos.smugmug.com/Category/Astrophotography-at-Placidus/i-TDjW3hs/0/7acd5ccb/O/Grus%20Trio%202%20Lum%207%20RGB%203 h30%20each.jpg)

Field 38 min arc, north up.

Each galaxy is around magnitude 12 to 12.5. There are very few images of them out there to compare to.

There are squillions of other tiny galaxies - many spirals, a couple faint magellanic beasties, scattered about.

FLI PL16803 on 20 inch PlaneWave. Lum: 7 hrs. RGB: 3h30 per channel.

As usual, all robotics, motor control electronics and firmware, and all control, acquisition and processing software written/built in house by us.


We've been out of the game for about 6 months due to the death of our third generator, the decision to go solar, and the usual effects of Covid on imports. We went with 4.8 KWH worth of batteries/inverter from Mobile Power Solutions in Qld. Superb.

[Retrograde]

A gorgeous field M & T.

Glad to hear things are back up & running. Hope you have a nice, trouble free run for a while.

[Placidus]

Thanks Pete!

[multiweb]

Glad to hear everything is ticking again and wow! :eyepop: what a field. Superb. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[PKay]

Have missed the images from your big bucket...

Good to see you up and running again :)

[Placidus]

Thanks Marc and Peter, that's most kind.

[alpal]

Hi Mike and Trish,
glad to have you back - I missed your pics.
Top image part from some minor wavy banding
in the low signal areas.


cheers
Allan

[Placidus]

Thanks muchly Allan. We can see the banding if we lean on the brightness slider. Almost certainly due to too-heavy-handed wavelet noise reduction causing posterization in the blacks. One day I'll have a think about how to stop that happening. In the interim, nobody to lean hard on the brightness slider!

[vlazg]

Great image M & T, good to have you back

[Placidus]

Cheers George :)

[Dave882]

Absolutely love this! Beautiful detail and a really interesting field!!

[strongmanmike]

Now THAT's what you've been missing huh guys?!! Fields full of galaxies, who can't just look and wonder....:thumbsup:

Mike

[Ryderscope]

An enchanting field replete with galaxies galore. Much fun is to be had in wandering around the field in the image.

[Placidus]

Thanks David.



Thanks Rodney. Kinda like they are all "background" galaxies. No great big M83 in the middle.



Yep, we've been missing this. You're right about looking and wondering. What is out there? Glad they're a long way away.

[gregbradley]

Fabulous image. I really like your processing of this one. Very nicely done.

Such a great field.

Greg.

[Placidus]

Thanks Greg. That's very encouraging.

[matlud]

What a great image M & T! a really fascinating field 👍

[AdamJL]

Stunning field! I've spent a long time looking at that image.

So.Many.Galaxies!! Wow

Can I ask what causes the banding across the image? Looks like fingerprint lines

[Andy01]

Welcome back guys - the Placidus deep field huh? - excellent! :thumbsup:

[The_bluester]

Wow, a beautiful image!

[Placidus]

Many thanks Matthew!



I suspect it's posterization of the blacks due to our home-made written-by-me wavelet noise reduction algorithm. Just being gentler with the noise reduction would make it go away. Possibly doing things in a different order would help. Going to have to think long and hard about that. For me, designing and building all the robotics, all the electronics, all the firmware, all the control software, and all the image processing software is much of the fun, but of course the result can be a bit "amateur".



Thanks muchly Andy!



Cheers Paul, that's kind.

[topheart]

Hubblesque! MNT

Cheers,
Tim

[Placidus]

Thanks Tim! Our beastie's strength seems to be really faint things like tiny galaxies far, far away.