NGC 3247 is a star-forming region in Carna called the Whirling Dervish. We see no Dervish. Instead, we see a cartoon-style bulldog (think Rough and Ready or Scooby Do, seen from above and behind) wearing a Madame Pompadour style hair-do and a very elegant and definitely whirling ballgown.
Seeing was good, and since we've started refocussing once an hour, and bolted some extra camera support on, we're getting sharper images. This is perhaps our sharpest image to date. Consequently the
original full size image is a little large at 3.7 MB, but there's quite a lot of subtle detail - fine shock fronts, tiny pillars, finer dust lanes, etc - if you hunt around.
Unlike just about anything in the Magellanic Clouds, this region seems pretty gentle, as befits the Versailles ballroom, and there's precious little OIII or SII. We've tried not to force out what isn't there.
Red: SII (6hrs), Blue: OIII (6hrs), Green: H-alpha (4hrs), all in 1hr subs. Aspen CG16M on 20" PlaneWave. Field 36' arc, 0.55 sec arc/pixel. As usual, all observatory control and image processing software built/written in-house.
Very best,
Mike n Trish