NGC 3621 in Hydra GSO 12

[kinetic]

Hi all,

Tonight I was just about to give up about midnight after having
annoying high cirrus all weekend and then it cleared.
I nabbed NGC 3621 in Hydra with my setup.
Cartes says it is mag 9.6 with a surface brightness of 14.4
Seeing was average, I could only salvage 137 of 300 frames.

Steve

[renormalised]

Nah....that's just some bit of wispy cirrus that looks like a galaxy called NGC3621:P:D

Seriously though, good shot under those conditions:D:D

[Hagar]

Nice one Steve. Definitely getting the hang of the camera now. You will have to get yourself setup for some long exposures and colour and then show the group what a DSI can do in the right hands.

Well done.

[kinetic]

Ahh Doug it wasn't a serious night....I was just glad to get something.
I was testing a focusing mask for a few hours then 3621 happened to be
the closest object so I drove over to it.

I can only manage 5 sec at this FL without PEC turned on.
PE sync on my homemade Bartel setup is a chore to tune in.
Plus it's not worth doing when the gully breezes are happening.
137 frames from 300 is not a good night.
200 or so from 300, now that's when magic comes out of this
setup.

Steve

[Kevnool]

Great image there steve.......Way better than mine...LoL.....Cheers Kev.

[AlexN]

:) Nicely done Steve! Get real technical like and add an autoguide port to your mount (dont ask me how or even if its possible...) but man! if you can achieve image like you have been with 5sec subs.. imagine if you push it out to 1~2 mins! :)

Top job indeed... definitely making that setup shine!

Alex.

[kinetic]

Thanks Alex.

John and I were discussing the Pickering scale last night.
You would obviously have seen a low to medium power view of
a typical bright star through a scope at about F5-7?

Unless you're about 8-9 on the pickering scale, there is just
no way you can do time exposure on a scope at these
focal lengths and not make the star blur into a blob.

You would just be stacking blobs.

You wide field guys make some beautiful stuff....but that
is all because you are so wide field. :)
Your stars are hopefully still pinpoints and your tracking
issues are far less critical.

Like I said...about 5 sec exposures at FL 1500 is about all I can
get away with on any night with Pickering scale hovering around
6 or 7.
With some rare cells of very steady seeing, I can stretch it out to
30seconds sometimes but I'd maybe capture a few dozen good frames
in 6 hrs of dark. I wiah I lived on top of Mauna Kea :)

Steve

[Ric]

Nice and sharp Steve and there's some good detail coming through even at 5 second subs.

Top stuff

[Quark]

Top effort Steve,

Revealing quite a bit of the spiral structure while not washing out the core.
I would be most interested in the sort of detail you can capture in other galaxies with this process you have developed.

Regards
Trevor

[kinetic]

Thanks so much for your praise Kev,Doug, Renormalised, Alex, Ric and Trevor,

I was curious just how deep this setup goes and so
I compared it to a frame from the Aladin Skyserver.
I found a few stars that go at least to mag 18 on the
catalogue overlay.

Steve

[AlexN]

I agree.. I found when imaging at 1700mm focal lenght with the SCT @ 6.3, the stars tend to be blobish.. however, Perhaps its time to bend the wallet up a bit, get some adaptive optics going on! :) that makes seeming blobs into pinpoints.. :)

I'll hopefully have first light of the ST9 + AO-7 tonight... get a feel for what I can do with it..

Alex.