Arp 41 - NGC1232/1232A

[Maurice]

Hi all

Attached is an image of Arp41/NGC1232 taken from suburban Melbourne.

125x200s with a GSO RC14 @ f/8 + ASI2600MC camera.
Processed with APP.

Just a tad under 7hrs total exposure & I don't think that any extra time would yield much more information.
I've reached the pain/gain sweet spot ratio with this one from my suburban skies. :)
Lots of faint fuzzies in the background.

Interesting galaxy at 61Mly away with its companion at about 68Mly away...
Or according to some sources, the 'companion' is actually about 5x further away & has nothing to do with NGC1232..

Low res full frame & crop (@25% full size) attached, or slightly higher res here:

https://flic.kr/p/2mMEFBd

Cheers
Maurice

[alpal]

Hi Maurice,
quite a good image considering that it's from
the light polluted suburbs of Melbourne with a colour camera
and on a dim Mag 11 target.
With 2 or 3 hours more careful processing you may have been
able to obtain an extra 10 to 20% out of the image in
the high noise areas.
By splitting the channels -
the blue channel had the most background noise.



cheers
Allan

[multiweb]

Simply superb Maurice. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
People don't seem to realise this is tiny and faint.

[strongmanmike]

A very good result from city skies Morris :thumbsup:

I love NGC 1232, a real mans galaxy! :D

Mike

[Peter Ward]

The GSO14 is a bit of a beast which you have obviously tamed very
well Maurice.

Very nice indeed :thumbsup:....but no mention of the mount?

[gregbradley]

Very nice Maurice.

Nicely processed.

Greg.

[Maurice]

Thanks Allan.
I think that I spent a total of about 30min processing the post calibration data after APP did its thing.
Maybe I should spend more time refining the result.
I think that I literally only applied a slight high pass filter from within APP & then tweaked the colour balance a tad.
I'm just lazy, I guess.....



Cheers Marc.
It is difficult to get detail in the spiral arms of this one.
I had to wait to get some reasonable seeing to start to bring out some of the brighter HII regions. I was quite pleased with the detail in the 'companion' NGC1232A as well.



Thanks Mike.
It is quite a challenge to get a decent result on this one from city skies.
Flats have to be pretty good as well as having a good light pollution removal algorithm.
I'm happy with the way that APP does this.

...not sure about the 'real man's galaxy' comment... I do like the occasional beer - but I prefer a good shiraz (I am Italian) :D



Thank you Peter..
'tis quite a beast to tame. I wish that GSO would put just a bit more effort into the mechanics of the OTA, because I think that the optics are fundamentally quite OK.
I changed the focuser to a 'NightCrawler', which made a big difference, but keeping collimation can be a chore.

As for the mount; I'm afraid that its just my usual workhorse, the EQ8.
It has proven to be very reliable & acceptably accurate over the past few years. I now us N.I.N.A to control it & with ASTAP plate-solving works a treat.



Much appreciated Greg. Thank you.

[strongmanmike]

He he...as a fellow countryman, I agree, nothing wrong with a nice glass of red, Salute!...as long as it is accompanied by pasta or cheese :question: :D :lol:

Mike

[Placidus]

Most excellent. We must try that one this summer.

[Ryderscope]

A wonderful classic object Maurice and worthy of the attention that you’ve clearly given it in taking the time to collect data under not ideal conditions :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Maurice]

Thanks M&T...
Its a lovely object to image.



Thank you very much Rodney.
It would be a real treat to be able to image this object with a large scope from a dark site.