Because I had plenty up my sleeve, I took the week off on leave to hit something over the New Moon
...buuut of course
once I was off, the weather reports had most of the week cloudy didn't they?
....except Monday night
, which turned out to be perfectly clear, steady and transparent with no Moon
but I fear this will be it for the rest of the week here in the Canberra region....sigh...dreaming of the Atacama
So, armed with a few options, depending on the seeing, which thankfully proved to be quite good on the night
I decided to hit this well placed and beautiful, all be it rather small (4.8' x 3'), spiral galaxy in Cetus, which is rarely imaged by amateurs
I was quite pleased with the detail obtained and a cool thing to note, is the distant spiral galaxy seen through the arms of NGC 578, it's the yellow/orange object that appears to be sticking out of the galaxy disc to the left of the core
Capture details are under the image and all 7hrs of data, through 5 filters, was collected over the one night (no auto/scripting and manual hand dome pushing)
. I actually managed to grab 7.5hrs of data all up but had to throw a few subs due to bright satellite trails, two of which, (of course
), passed right through the core of the galaxy
. Happy and contented with a productive night, I definitely enjoyed the Macca's on the way home at 5:30am
NGC 578 (click on image twice to see the largest file)
To surf the whole full res full frame image go
HERE
Cheers
Mike