This is one of the closest galaxies to the Milkyway at 6.1 mlyrs away and about 45,000lyrs diameter. It proved to be very faint and so cannot be imaged with a Moon present and colour was so dim I decided to binx2 along with Ha which provided a lot of noise in the final image that had to be deal with partially with a double luminance.
With Richardo's sensational widefield image you can see just how big this galaxy actually is and was bigger than I thought (bigger sensor needed I think) so a faint spiral arm is cut off at the top. This galaxy has large HII regions throughout which binning does not seem to have affected too much as well as large blue star clouds. Part of the luminance was taken in good seeing.
Nice blending of the Ha John, however I find the image of the galaxy and the starts in the field quite monochrome, I believe there must be some more colors there than blue
Thanks for the comments, may have another go next year with proper colour to help those poor stars which I admit were not my concern with this image. Did think I might have overdone the blue enhancement perhaps.
Steven your ngc300 is very good as it is such a faint galaxy that needs stretching a lot. Pseudo Ha sounds interesting.
Hi John, great work with getting the result you have, especially if the moon was hampering your rgb run.
I love the Ha blend you've got and this was exactly what I was after....
2xs binning is the only way with the colour and Ha as it's way dim for sure.
Getting any resolution to those mega tiny stars that populate and make up the majority of the arm structure would need super dark skies and a hell of a lot more data than we have gone for.. possibly a larger aperture as well!
Haven't seen any one yet with 20+ hours on it and I think this is what it would really need.
Not the most dynamic object that's for sure but it's fun trying!
And yes we can always add to what we have already next year!
Thanks Richardo, knew this image would not be the best with the binning and all but star clouds and Ha do start to show detail even at low res. Colour needs to start at 20min subs unbinned and 20min luminance, a better sensor like the ST10 but those bright stars will bloom somewhat. Like you say next year we can add more, ngc300 is tricky
Excellent John. An amazing quantity of HII regions on display. They sure do add an extra dimension to what is a great image. I do however thing they are a little too bold for the surrounding image. Perhaps backing them off a little will restore a balance. Overall, this is some great imaging. Well done.
