Two lovely Sculptor Spirals

[Garyh]

Hi Folks,
Had some nice weather this way late last week and into the weekend.
Decided to try my hand at a few Galaxies in Sculptor and ended up doing NGC 300 and the smaller NGC 7793.
As I remember NGC 300 was a tough one being large and so faint so I wasn`t sure as to what I would finish up with and NGC 7793 being only around 9 arc min across but a little brighter..
NGC 300 came to a total of just over 2-1/2 hours while NGC 7793 was 2 hours total. Both at Iso 800 and 7 and 6 min respectivly with my Modded Canon 20D and 6" newt.
The nights were much warmer so noise reduction was applied on both images.
Overall quiet happy with both images but maybe a little too much noise reduction with the 7793 shot?
Both images scaled and cropped for the posting.
cheers and thanks for looking....
and like always any comments appreciated!
Gary

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Very nice work Gary Nice to see people shooting challenging targets too. It doesn't appear you overdid the noise reduction. I'd probably make the sky a bit darker / increase the contrast a bit though.

Cheers, Marcus

[Phil]

Nice shots Gary well done mate.
Phil

[theodog (Jeff)]

Not bad Gary.
Plenty of detail there.
The background seems a little inky to me -perhaps a little lighter.
Great as they are 'though, well done.

[bluescope]

Nice to see some different targets Gary ... you've got a few extra faint fuzzies in the second image as well. Good work.

[gregbradley]

Very nice.

Greg.

[browndog (Ian)]

Two nice looking images.
I really like NGC300 - great pic on a faint target

[jase (Jason)]

Excellent work Gary. Nice structure presented. Well done.

[allan gould]

Really nice shots, good focus and depth to these. I had a go at a few galaxies but didnt go deep enough. Ill have to lift my game to match yours.

[Garyh]

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

Very nice work Gary Nice to see people shooting challenging targets too. It doesn't appear you overdid the noise reduction. I'd probably make the sky a bit darker / increase the contrast a bit though.

Cheers, Marcus

Thanks Marcus, yes must agree, maybe a little more contrast as they are a little flat looking.
Thanks again
Gary

Originally Posted by Phil

Nice shots Gary well done mate.
Phil

cheers Phil glad you stopped by for a look!..

Originally Posted by theodog

Not bad Gary.
Plenty of detail there.
The background seems a little inky to me -perhaps a little lighter.
Great as they are 'though, well done.

Thanks Jeff, the guiding was nice and the seeing reasonable but warmish which made it hard to keep the small amount of detail I can get with my setup..But I`m happy with them..
Cs Gary

Originally Posted by bluescope

Nice to see some different targets Gary ... you've got a few extra faint fuzzies in the second image as well. Good work.

Much appreciated Steve, I must admit I love those little fuzzies in the background....bad hey....

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Very nice.

Greg.

Ta Greg glad you didn`t mind them...

Originally Posted by browndog

Two nice looking images.
I really like NGC300 - great pic on a faint target

Thanks Ian, yes I do find NGC 300 to be a real challenge to image being very faint, but it has come out reasonably well I reckon!
More people should give this one a go!
cheers Gary

Originally Posted by jase

Excellent work Gary. Nice structure presented. Well done.

Thanks Jase, glad you stopped by, I do try but I think I must start investing more time per image and learn more on the processing side!

Originally Posted by allan gould

Really nice shots, good focus and depth to these. I had a go at a few galaxies but didnt go deep enough. Ill have to lift my game to match yours.

Thanks Allan, yes do the longest exposures you can do with these kind of targets an plenty of them! Even with 7 min subs ngc 300 was still just a big smudge!
Thanks for the comments people....
Might give them some more tweaking! and I have some more fuzzies from lat night to process...tonight is a sleeping night ...need more sleep!
Cs Gary

[Deeno]

Simply beautiful!!

[Matty P (Matt)]

Excellent result Gary,

Lovely detail and colour present in both images.

Thanks for sharing.

[Ric]

Fantastic images Gary, there's good detail and a nice natural colour in these two.

Top stuff.

[RB (Andrew)]

They're beautiful shots Gary.
I don't think they're overdone on NR and the background sky looks just fine on my monitor.

Well done.

[Alchemy (Clive)]

keeping up the good work i see gary, its amazing how the imaging here is compared to a year or two ago, back then 30 mins was the norm for exposure time, now its 2 plus hrs... it shows too.

[Garyh]

Thanks Deeno, Matt, Andrew and Clive!
Yes you are right Clive, the imaging has really gone up a notch or two with IIS members over the last year, so many very nice images being posted! and lots going over to ccd`s as there price continually drops...one day I shall get one too!
cheers Gary

[Tamtarn]

Good to see a couple of not so often imaged galaxies Gary. Very nicely done once again

[sjastro]

Nice images Gary.

I was going to image NGC 7793 but couldn't find a suitable guide star.

Steven

[winensky]

Love your 300. Tried it last night but I need guiding to get reasonable exposures. Yours is sharp and very noise free. Lovely work.