Hydra galaxies

[andyc (Andy)]

A rich scatter of galaxies spread across the view of Abell 1060, with the interesting ring of spiral galaxy NGC3312 quite prominent. There are also bright ellipticals NGC3309 and NGC3311. NGC3314 to the upper right is fun - two galaxies almost perfectly overlapping. The dust lanes of the almost face-on spiral are silhouetted against the light of the background galaxy, and the overall impression is a little like an 'X'.

Wasn't possibly my best image, or best processing (there's an annoying dark line across the view from the darks I think), but a lack of fiddling time means I'm going to pop it up for your views, comments and criticisms!

Larger view here

29 x 5 minutes, ISO800, EOS 60D, darks, flats and bias subtracted. 200mm f/5 Newtonian on HEQ5 pro mount, OAG & StarShoot Autoguider. Stacked and processed in PixInsight and Photoshop.

[Atmos (Colin)]

It is quite a nice area and it has been captured well. Looks mostly like it needs some more exposure time put into it but at not even 2.5 hours it has come out well.

It could use with a bit more saturation but I guess that may not really be possible without more data. Have you processed using PixInsight? And further, did you use the Chrominance Noise Reduction in LRGB Combination? I ask because virtually all of the stars are white, I stopped using it because of that (unless I am doing narrowband and want mostly white stars).

It is looking pretty good though.

[Somnium (Aidan)]

Nice one Andy, this is definitely on my list of targets, Galaxy clusters and the large scale structure are amazing. it is mind boggling that we can even get an image like this of such distant and massive objects.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Nice work Andy! it's a great cluister this one, the two bright stars really frame it out nicely I recon

Sheesh, I recall I started collecting data on this group back in 2010 with the Starfire...still not finished

Mike

[RickS (Rick)]

That's a lovely group of galaxies, Andy. Well done!

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

It is precisely images like this one that make me dream of RGB imaging....

Awesome work Andy