Hi it's hard to believe you can see detail in another Galaxy 15 million light years away so easily. This is the first image after a major rebuild on the fork mount of the 18' newt, after some teething problems it seems to track ok. Hope you enjoy this, constructive criticism is always welcome.
Lum.= 2 hours Red = 1 hour Green= 1 hour Blue = 1.25 hours
taken with QHY9
Clear skies Ken
Thanks Robbie, Fred, Marc and Jjjnetie aperture does rule but mounting it is a problem. These were short 4 minute subs, might take some flats and bias and do a Sidonio on it.
Clear skies Ken
Ken that is an amazing image of my favorite galaxy.
I prefer to call it Caroline's galaxy because Caroline Herschel found it. She also helped her brother catalogue 2500 DSO.
The distance to her galaxy (the average of 4 recent measurements) is 11.7 million light years. (3.6 Mpc) http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/NED1D/ned1d.html
Great image Ken, lots of nice details ! But as it turns out, it is only 11.7 million light years away ... The only question I have is about the slight dark halos around the stars (which would be the processing, not the rebuilt mount / scope).
Thanks guys for looking and setting the distance straight, I used a slight unsharp mask on the Luminance layer but it left rings around the stars. I did a repro on it changing the colour balance slightly.
Clear skies Ken