I imaged this cluster of galaxies last Saturday night from Linden, the same night Louie bagged the Crab and NGC 2070. The moon hadn't set when I started imaging and the sky was still not very dark when I had to wind up thanks to a dying battery( and the fact that I had a 22 km 7 bridges walk scheduled for the next day)
well it took me a full week to get around to processing it, but here is the outcome
Details: 76 minutes of exposure (9 x 4 minutes at ISO 1600 plus 4 x10 minutes at ISO 1600)
camera: un-modded canon 300D
telescope: ED 80
Mount CG5
Autoguided (5 inch newtonian guide scope, Atik 1 C guide camera)
raw images aligned and stacked in IRIS
processed in photoshop and Neat
While there are a number of bright galaxies easily discernable, I was pleasantly surprised to serendipitiously discover that the 17.01 magnitude galaxy PGC 646697 - a very close neighbour of NGC 1427A- appears as a tiny but distinguishable dot, so I suppose that is how faint an object this imaging system is capable of capturing
A larger image is available at
http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=288367686&size=l
a larger inverted image is available at
http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=288367687&size=l
thanks for looking, comments and suggstions welcome
narayan