Centaurus Chain of Galaxies

gregbradley · #1 09-05-2011, 08:49 PM

I just had 4 clear nights at my dark site. Fabulous seeing for most of it.

I noticed this one in the Sky when I was slewing the scope in this area.

There are some fairly unusual looking galaxies in the view. A wild looking circular one mid right side and a nice looking spiral up near the top.

I was also delighted at the performance of installing my MMOAG offaxis guider onto my TEC180. Perfect round stars every time with unlimited exposure time on the Tak NJP mount.

I'll post an image of that setup. Lots of stuff hanging off the end of this rather large scope.

LRGB 90 60 60 60 for a total of 4:30 hours over 2 nights. It would have been more but Microsoft Windows update was having trouble updating and at 3am it kept restarting the computer. It took me 2 nights to work out why imaging stopped at 3am instead of 5:30am.

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/134561691/large regular

http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/ima...61691/original large

Here's an image of the flattener, offaxis guider and various adapters to the camera:

http://upload.pbase.com/image/134562827

Greg.

barx1963 (Malcolm) · #2 09-05-2011, 08:53 PM

Lovely image Greg, you must be proud of that one! Can you let us know what are the major galaxies in the image, especially the little interacting pair on te far right.

Malcolm

strongmanmike (Michael) · #3 09-05-2011, 09:00 PM

Very cool Greg

Some amazing galaxies in there, the tight spiral is mad

Nice work

Mike

TrevorW · #4 09-05-2011, 09:00 PM

Nice image Greg everything is there including a nice collection of faint fuzzies

RobF (Rob) · #5 09-05-2011, 09:05 PM

Wonderful image - truely a credit to you and a successful night.

gregbradley · #6 09-05-2011, 09:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by barx1963

Lovely image Greg, you must be proud of that one! Can you let us know what are the major galaxies in the image, especially the little interacting pair on te far right.

Malcolm

I looked in my version of the sky. Its not well labelled. But if you have the Sky or similar this chain is about 2/3rds the way between Centaurus A and M83 and bit above them forming a triangle.

Quote:

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Very cool Greg

Some amazing galaxies in there, the tight spiral is mad

Nice work

Mike

Thanks Mike. That tight spiral is wild I agree. I couldn't believe it when I saw it. It would make a good Hubble target so they get a really high res shot of it.

ballaratdragons (Ken) · #7 09-05-2011, 09:18 PM

Fantastic work Greg.

It's nice to know I'm not the only person imaging the Centaurus Galaxy Cluster.
Usually it feels like I am. And there are soooo many beautiful Galaxies in the Cluster.

Very nice detail

gregbradley · #8 09-05-2011, 09:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ballaratdragons

Fantastic work Greg.

It's nice to know I'm not the only person imaging the Centaurus Galaxy Cluster.
Usually it feels like I am. And there are soooo many beautiful Galaxies in the Cluster.

Very nice detail

Thanks Ken. I have to admit though I found it by accident scrolling through the Sky.

Greg.

jjjnettie (Jeanette) · #9 09-05-2011, 09:26 PM

Superb work. a joy, thanks

Ross G · #10 09-05-2011, 09:35 PM

Hi Greg,

Wow...again an amazing photo of something unusual!

Again, I am rushing to the Star Atlas to see where it is.

So much detail and such a variety of objects, it's like 50 photos in one!

Thank you.

Ross.

DavidU (Dave) · #11 09-05-2011, 09:40 PM

That's one amazing image Greg. Fabulous processing.

alexch (Alex) · #12 09-05-2011, 10:00 PM

Wow! I am speechless... The central spiral alone would be make the image worthwhile but with all the other galaxies in the field it becomes a real visual treat!

Thanks for sharing, this image is in favourite list of deep-sky images.

Cheers,
Alex

astroron (Ron) · #13 09-05-2011, 10:00 PM

Nice group of galaxies there Greg, very fine image

Cheers

[1ponders] (Paul) · #14 09-05-2011, 10:07 PM

Amazing shot Greg. so much going on in there.

You must have been picking up on some of my thoughts. That central spiral galaxy is NGC4622 and I was imaging that area on the 1/5/11. It was mentioned in this thread here. Mind you having seen your shot I might try to hunt down that one at the top of your frame. It looks very interesting.

gregbradley · #15 09-05-2011, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjjnettie

Superb work. a joy, thanks

Thanks JJ. It was fun rediscovering the potential of the TEC scope after using the larger Planewave a lot over the last few months. The TEC can reach quite deep as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ross G

Hi Greg,

Wow...again an amazing photo of something unusual!

Again, I am rushing to the Star Atlas to see where it is.

So much detail and such a variety of objects, it's like 50 photos in one!

Thank you.

Ross.

It is a wonderful collection of unusual images. Seeing was just superb under a stunningly clear sky. My dark site just delivers the good skies night after night so am I very lucky there. A couple of nights it came over totally cloudy after sunset. By 9:30/10pm it was totally clear horizon to horizon. It does this sort of thing often. Its like anticloud type environment there at night. For it to be cloudy it really needs to be cloudy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidU

That's one amazing image Greg. Fabulous processing.

Thanks David. It did take a bit of work to keep the image clean.
It was also taken at -45C. The FLI camera can really cool down hard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexch

Wow! I am speechless... The central spiral alone would be make the image worthwhile but with all the other galaxies in the field it becomes a real visual treat!

Thanks for sharing, this image is in favourite list of deep-sky images.

Cheers,
Alex

Thanks Alex. It was largely unkown to me until the other night. It makes you wonder how many things there are that are interesting in the night sky. There seems to be no shortage.

Quote:

Originally Posted by astroron

Nice group of galaxies there Greg, very fine image

Cheers

Thanks a lot Ron.

multiweb (Marc) · #16 09-05-2011, 10:13 PM

Such a cool field! Loads to see. Some really interesting structures too. Lovely colors and details in the processing. Nice work indeed.

h0ughy (David) · #17 09-05-2011, 10:21 PM

wow Greg you have been an imaging monster

ballaratdragons (Ken) · #18 09-05-2011, 10:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Thanks Ken. I have to admit though I found it by accident scrolling through the Sky.

Greg.

atleast you imaged it while you were there

gregbradley · #19 09-05-2011, 10:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by multiweb

Such a cool field! Loads to see. Some really interesting structures too. Lovely colors and details in the processing. Nice work indeed.

Thanks Marc. Once I saw the test image I was hooked. Such unusual galaxies. The nice spiral one up top is probably what our Milky Way looks like from a distance. I may try it out with the Planewave to see if I can get a closer look at a couple of them.

I got the FLI Microline camera humming at -45C for these series of images. It was cold at night between 4 and 9C.

Quote:

Originally Posted by h0ughy

wow Greg you have been an imaging monster

Thanks Dave. I have taken a lot of images lately. I love it!

Quote:

Originally Posted by ballaratdragons

atleast you imaged it while you were there

I've taken a few galaxy clusters recently. I don't think I have posted all of them. So I was interested in any more of them. They do make for interesting shots. I suspect there are lots of them to be found. Looking through the Sky occassionally I see a large amount of galaxies close together. The trouble is probably most are really really small to our view.

marc4darkskies (Marcus) · #20 09-05-2011, 10:36 PM

Very nice image Greg! Did you do long subs? At a dark site I'd shoot for 30 minutes!

Cheers, Marcus