Rolf Olsen and Mike Sidonio are pleased to present here what we believe to be the deepest colour image, taken in visible light, ever presented of the entirety of the enigmatic and famous galaxy NGC 5128
Centaurus A
This unique image represents a mammoth collaborative integration time of 140 hrs worth of exposure using two different imaging systems:
Rolf Olsen: 120 hrs using a 10" Newtonian and QSI CCD camera from Titarangi an outer suburb of Auckland New Zealand and reaches to at least Mag 25.45 For more on Rolfs results see:
http://tinyurl.com/l76cpk5
Mike Sidonio: 20hrs using a 6" Starfire refractor and FLI CCD camera from perfect dark skies at Wiruna, North West of Lithgow Australia and reaches beyond Mag 24. For more on Mikes results see:
http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/centaurus_a
We spent several days of back and forth processing versions of our combined work before we finally settled on the following result... so we hope you guys like it as much as we do...and hopefully you will never look at Centaurus A quite the same again
The attached thumbnail is pretty small so we highly recommend you view the larger version here:
Olsen-Sidonio Centaurus A Extreme Deep Field
Mike and Rolf
