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Old 09-06-2014, 02:07 PM
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pvelez (Pete)
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Sydney
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NGC 3521 A Tricky Fellow

Here's my revised image of NGC 3521

I found this quite hard to process. I do like a splash of colour but I found it difficult to increase the saturation in the galaxy without getting nasty stars - usually a burnt orange - or a sludgy brown tinge to the dim areas. So the background is much darker than it should be. I did experiment with combining a Lum and star mask which made it a bit easier to be selective. I think I need much more practice with this.

That said, I do like this field. There are a few galaxies lurking in the background - I've added an annotated image produced with PI. Is a cool feature.

No Decon this time. Just some sharpening with ATWT. All processed in PI.

Higher res images can be found here:

http://www.pbase.com/equitius/image/156018700

http://www.pbase.com/equitius/image/156018787

Here is the blurb from my website:

NGC 3521 is a spiral galaxy with a central bar. Our view is inclined from an angle of about 72 degrees so its not easy to make out the bar.

NGC 3521 is located in the rich field of galaxy in the constellation Leo. This is a happy hunting ground for astronomers seeking galaxies as is shown by the multitude of dim fuzzies in the background. The following image has been annotated to show the more prominent ones.

This galaxy is around 26 million light years from us so its a reasonable distance away.

This image was taken with a SBIG STX16803 on a Planewave CDK12.5 from my remote set up at Coonabarabran. It was shot in May 2014.


Comments most welcome

Pete
Attached Thumbnails
Click for full-size image (NGC 3521_Final_IIS.jpg)
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Click for full-size image (NGC 3521_Annotated_IIS.jpg)
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Last edited by pvelez; 09-06-2014 at 02:19 PM. Reason: Added web reference and more info
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