Another NGC4945 (Cropped) - Side-on Galaxy

[Doogs38]

The first half of Sat night (in Canberra) was terrific without the moon so I gave NGC4945 a crack after being inspired by Dave882's excellent recent imagine of same (https://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=198187). Took two hours of subs and culled 10 mins of it. My mount (AZ-EQ6) guided nicely for most of the session then nose dived as the seeing slowly deteriorated. Also played with the Ekos/INDI polar alignment tool in lieu of using my Polemaster (... with roughly the same outcome for each).

SW120ED with reducer/flattener @f6.4
ASI294MC, ASI290mm with Orion guidescope
22 x 300sec subs

Edited in APP, Photoshop and Topaz DeNoise, then cropped. Perhaps a tad too much DeNoise sharpening/enhacement on the galaxy.

Alex

[Dave882]

Nice work mate! I’m glad to have been able to inspire your attempt. Looks like the seeing was indeed pretty good, and you’ve managed to pickup some nice detail for only 2hrs. Well done! In APP did you try the “calibrate star colour” feature? I always found that a good tool for galaxies in particular.

It’s very subjective but yes I’d have to agree might be a touch heavy on the denoise. Not that I’m a processing expert, but I found that if your going to use denoise, a really super soft application before sharpening / saturation can prevent accentuating the noise but still maintain a fairly natural look. Keep a close eye on any fine detail too, if it starts to blur you’ve gone too far. It’s ok to have some grain in your image as sometimes it is actually part of the detail and can only be really successfully removed by more signal. Just my 2c

Look forward to seeing more of your imaging!

[Doogs38]

Thanks Dave, I'm enjoying watching and learning from others and love the pics you (and others) are posting. I think you were spot on re DeNoise; I'm new to the program and am learning that it's a powerful tool and a little goes a long way. I've just been playing with it for the past hour and it seems at even the lowest settings, ie. a light touch, it will produce a very visible change in imagery. Soooooo here is another version of there same image but with less DeNoise applied which makes it look coarser/grainier - I prefer this image over my earlier attempt!

I'm quite surprised how visible some very faint background galaxies are with only 1hr 50 mins of data. I've attached another pic I found on the internet that names some of them (from here: https://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=42238). I can see:

LEDA 3097829 (or [CFC97] Cen 5) 16th mag http://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=LEDA+3097829&
ESO 219-25 http://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=ESO+219-25&
6dFGS gJ130634.9-493149 http://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=6dFGS+gJ130634.9-493149&

NGC4945A is also visible with a bright foreground star.

Alex