Ngc300

[andyc (Andy)]

With luck this is just the beginning!

80 minutes of NGC300 from a dark site in southern NSW, EOS 60D and 150mm f/5 Newt. Comments and advice about colour welcome, this is a tricky so-and-so to image and process. If I get a chance at more dark-sky time this spring, I want to add a lot more to this one, it needs the time! There are lots of lovely galaxies in the background, including a nice interacting group at 11 o'clock, and the colliding pair of galaxy clusters (CL0053-37 https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0221d/ ) at 10 o'clock identified by Ray in his excellent image.

A larger version is here.

[alpal]

Hi Andy,
good job for 20 x 5 minutes, ISO800, EOS 60D.
A dark site makes all the difference.
You picked up more than I did from the suburbs with
much more integration time on a cooled CCD mono.

cheers
Allan.

[RickS (Rick)]

Shows a lot of promise, Andy. I'm sure there's more colour you could bring out, especially in the stars where your SNR should be quite high already (of course, you might have the opposite problem of saturated stars...)

Cheers,
Rick.

[andyc (Andy)]

Thanks guys. Rick, you're most likely right about the stars - saturation is an issue with DSLRs, but these are whiter than my usual stars, so I've overdone them at some point in the processing, thinking more about the faint stuff. Galaxy colour is still not quite right either, but I'll keep learning!

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

A very nice result for the exposure time available.

[codemonkey (Lee)]

Nice work Andy, will look great with more data. I like the fairly neutral colour balance... I struggled a lot with that and ultimately I'm not happy with the colour on mine but I can't seem to get it right.