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.