Well, I honestly thought I would never bother imaging this galaxy, I always thought it a little boring and for some reason I didn't like its shape..?
...true, go figure
Anyway, I am glad I decided to shoot it because as is often the case once you start to get data down it starts to grow on you, then when processing starts you get used to it and then you start to think..what
was I thinking?
I was lucky to get good seeing for most of one of the three nights and the other two were at least average
but I was also plagued by high wafting cloud at times the same night as the good seeing and given the presence of some faint Milky Way Cirrus dust in the field, well, passing high Earth cloud is not ideal huh? and then the last quarter Moon rose to really illuminate the scene
always something...
But after culling the worst frames the Cirrus is quite evident in the end result and I didn't push it too hard in an attempt to keep it subtle (which it actually is in reality)
The other thing was working the right colour and as is often the case colour palettes for this galaxy vary across the net...my RGB suggested
the AAO version was about right so I went with it
At only 5.3' X 4.75' in size NGC 2442 is actually smaller than I thought but in the end I was happy with the result and taking the gamble with the weather and flexing off work Thursday and Friday to complete the project paid dividends
The Meathook Galaxy (close up)
The Full Frame Complete with Milky Way Cirrus and many smaller galactic friends.
Milky Way Cirrus Dust (Aggressively stretched luminance)
Comparing with a beautiful high resolution result by Volker Wendell using the CHART32 CTIO 32" Cassegrain in sub arc sec seeing at Cerro Tololo, helps to identify features and details in my lower resolution data, even distant background galaxies that can be seen "through" NGC 2442 can be identified!
Cheers
Mike