View Single Post
  #1  
Old 13-10-2013, 03:07 AM
naskies's Avatar
naskies (Dave)
Registered User

naskies is offline
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 1,865
NGC 247 Needle's Eye Galaxy & Burbidge's Chain in Cetus

After months of narrowband imaging in the back yard, it was nice to finally get some LRGB data under the beautiful Leyburn skies last weekend... and fill my CCD's wells with photons rather than dark noise for a change

I stumbled across NGC 247 (Needle's Eye Galaxy) while checking out the nearby NGC 253 in a star atlas, and thought it looked rather neat in ESO's image. The dark "needle's eye" seems like an uncommon feature of galaxies... maybe someone (Robert?) knows the story here? There's also a cute little line of galaxies very close by called Burbidge's Chain.

Even though it's listed as magnitude 9 in most catalogues, NGC 247 actually has a remarkably low surface brightness at magnitude 24. I decided to spend three full nights at 2x2 binning on it to make sure that I'd have enough data, and it worked out quite well for luminance.

There's plenty of room for improvement in the processing, but that'll have to wait until a rainy day in summer when uni exams are all over. Enjoy!

1600x1200 version (100%)

1600x1200 version - inverted (100%)


Details: 32 hours L(HaR)GB (11 10 4 3 4) binned 2x2 with a GSO RC8, SX AO-LF + Lodestar, SBIG STF-8300M/OAG-8300/FW8-8300, Baader LRGB + Astrodon Ha filters, Skywatcher NEQ6 mount.
Attached Thumbnails
Click for full-size image (NGC247-800x600.jpg)
163.3 KB449 views
Click for full-size image (NGC247-InvertedLum-800x600.jpg)
38.1 KB137 views
Reply With Quote