NGC55 - The Whale Galaxy (Astrobin IOTD 28 Jan)

[Ryderscope]

NGC55 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation of Sculptor about 6.5 million light years from Earth. I've always found this galaxy to be an enigmatic object given that at first glance it is not visually attractive in any way like its neighbor NGC300 (others may disagree and please feel free to do so!). It does however demand attention and every astro imager feels the need to have one in their portfolio of images. I admit that after spending time with this galaxy it kind of grows on you. It certainly has a unique shape resulting from the angle that the galaxy lies in our line of sight when looking from Earth.

Processing this image was particularly challenging because of the severe reflection artefacts that were present in the data collected. This required significant work to remove and added quite a few hours of processing time to the workflow. I think that I'm going to have to pull down my image train to try and locate the source of the reflections.

Link to image on Astrobin is here. (https://astrob.in/2vi8q5/0/)

Clear skies,
Rodney

[Stephane]

Rodney, such a beautiful image. So much detail and nebulosity in the galaxy. Great job. :thumbsup:

Regards,
Stéphane

[Placidus]

Beautiful. Lovely colour.


The depth of the image is attested by the astonishing number of background galaxies far, far away.

[Kuz]

Excellent capture Rodney , colours are superb. Makes you wonder if someone in there is processing an image of the milky way. Just as we are.

[Paul Haese]

Nice image Rodney, I agree the galaxy has the ability to provide wonder. I found that mostly in the Ha data. I collected over 29 hours of data in Ha alone and found there were large loops and what looked like sprites of Ha near the core region. Unfortunately this was so faint it was not shown at all in the colour image, but can be faintly seen in the Ha image.

Once again a nice image. Well done.

[Ryderscope]

Thanks all for the feedback. It was good to see the background galaxies that came through in the final processing as well. I like your comment on the Ha data Paul as it speaks to the benefit of publishing Ha only images some times. An Ha image can stand alone quite well and show up a lot of detail that would otherwise be missed.

[gregbradley]

A wonderful image Rodney.

Love the colour you've gotten. I just don't see that type good colouring in the stars and objects in CMOS images. It really seems to be a quality of CCDs so they are not dead yet.

Greg.

[marc4darkskies]

An excellent rendition Rodney!! :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[strongmanmike]

Very nice result Rod, really lovely colour, well done :thumbsup: I agree about it growing on you, it did on me too once I was processing the data, plus I was lucky enough to get some good seeing when I shot her, that helps too. There are a few other galaxies that I always passed over due to thinking they were boring but then they ended up surprising me when I forced my own hand, NGC 247 comes to mind and I thought NGC 2442 The meat Hook was ugly... :lol: :screwy: I love NGC 55 in a good medium wide field eyepiece, with some aperture, under a dark sky, its so bright and long :thumbsup:

Mike

[alpal]

Wow Rodney,
nearly 36 hours of integration has shown its worth.
Good to have plenty of Ha data too.

That is a top image - excellent.



cheers
Allan

[Ryderscope]

Greg, Marcus, Mike, Allan,

Thanks for all the comments. I do find myself going longer with the integration times as it certainly helps in the final processing. Your comment on the star colours is an interesting one Greg as it relates to CMOS sensors. I haven't exercised my ASI6200 enough yet to form a view on that though the image I did of the SMC (https://astrob.in/0gke5g/B/) with the 200mm showed star colours that I thought were ok.

[matlud]

Great image Rodney! Lovely detail and colour 👏

[Ryderscope]

Many thanks Mathew.

[Ryderscope]

Well I certainly wasn't expecting that. Nevertheless, this is very good :D

[Andy01]

Congrats on the IOTD Rodney :)

[Emuhead]

Congratulations on the IOTD :thumbsup:

[CoolhandJo]

very nice! Congrats

[Ryderscope]

Thank you. I'm glad that I persisted with this one :)

CS,
Rodney

[matlud]

Congrats on a well deserved IOTD 👍

[Ryderscope]

Thanks Mathew.

[AdamJL]

A worthy winner, that's a stunning image!