Pavo Galaxy

[andyc (Andy)]

The Pavo Galaxy (NGC6744) is sometimes described as the galaxy most alike to our Milky Way. It lies about 30 million light-years away in Pavo, behind a carpet of foreground nearby stars. It's a fair bit bigger than the Milky Way at 175,000 light-years across compared to our 100,000, but has a pretty similar structure - many spiral arms and a central bar. We'd be about 2/3 of the way out towards the edge (an unregarded yellow sun in the unfashionable western spiral arm ). It's even got a disrupted satellite galaxy a little like our Large Magellanic Cloud - NGC6744A is a wisp of blue to the lower left.

Larger view here

Could do with a good bit more data, but this is 20 x 5 minutes (1hr 40min), and I don't know if I'll have time to get more. ISO800, EOS 60D, darks, flats and bias subtracted. 200mm f/5 Newtonian on HEQ5 pro mount, OAG & StarShoot Autoguider. Stacked and processed in PixInsight and Photoshop.

[RickS (Rick)]

NGC6744 is a difficult target, Andy. That's a pretty amazing result for less than 2 hours!

Cheers,
Rick.

[Atmos (Colin)]

I agree with Rick, for less than two hours it has come up quite nicely. I've only briefly attempted it myself, didn't realise just how dim it was!

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Not bad Andy, you have that fainter sweeping outer arm and like you say just needs more exposure, it has a low surfcae brightness this baby...are you imaging from Sydney? If so, probably benefit from grabbing more data from a dark site (if you are actually able to of course)

Mike

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Nice result Andy

I tried imaging this galaxy once and failed miserably...

[andyc (Andy)]

Originally Posted by RickS

NGC6744 is a difficult target, Andy. That's a pretty amazing result for less than 2 hours!

Cheers,
Rick.

Originally Posted by Atmos

I agree with Rick, for less than two hours it has come up quite nicely. I've only briefly attempted it myself, didn't realise just how dim it was!

Thanks Rick and Colin, it's one of those big dim ones, and I'm pretty happy to get this through the bit of LP we have here. I was pleasantly surprised to get the satellite galaxy, though without a lot more data to get the noise down, it's not an image that survives being enlarged too much!

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Not bad Andy, you have that fainter sweeping outer arm and like you say just needs more exposure, it has a low surfcae brightness this baby...are you imaging from Sydney? If so, probably benefit from grabbing more data from a dark site (if you are actually able to of course)

Mike

Thanks Mike, yeah, I might try and grab a bit more before it sets this year. I have a chance to get south out of the Sydney lights at the long weekend (a place called Nerriga), I might think about a bit of imaging from there if I can, fingers crossed for clear skies! But I might be after new targets, will see...

Originally Posted by Slawomir

Nice result Andy

I tried imaging this galaxy once and failed miserably...

Thanks Suavi