NGC 3981 is a small spiral galaxy in Crater that's rarely imaged by amateurs and I can see why; it's a difficult target with only a small central spiral and outer reaches that are
very faint! The bright central structure is only 4 x 1 arcmins. Its very faint outer structures extend to roughly 8 x 5 arcmins and suggest some kind of interaction with another galaxy long ago. Lots of tiny faint fuzzies are visible in the frame too. It's part of the NGC 4038 group, named after one of the pair of galaxies called The Antennae.
As you'd expect I can't compete with the amazing renditions done with the 8.2m ESO and other 1m class scopes in Chile; the predominant images on the web. Having said that, the main structures compare well as does the detail in the core, so I'm happy with that!
Imaged over 5 nights, it was a struggle getting enough clear sky and there was much waiting with many subs thrown away due to poor seeing.
This is an LRGB image. L=360 mins, R=165 mins, G=135 mins, B=180 mins for a total of 14 hours. To be honest I need double the integration time in excellent seeing to do any better!!
The FOV (cropped for composition purposes from the full frame): 34.4 x 22.9 arcmins. Seeing was average and ranged from 1.9 to 2.6 arcsecs per pixel FWHM. Thankfully, luminance was gathered during relatively good seeing ~2.1 arcsec FWHM.
5 May: image updated with 160 minutes of synthetic luminance (Ls) to significantly improve background noise levels.
Screen sized version:
https://pbase.com/gailmarc/image/171591431/original
Full Res:
https://pbase.com/gailmarc/image/171591434/original
Annotated:
https://pbase.com/gailmarc/image/171591432/original