Ngc 3109

[Ric]

Hi all, here is a capture from the last clear night.

NGC 3109 is described as a very faint Barred Spiral galaxy at a magnitude of 10.4 in the constellation of Hydra.

This was taken with the LX200R 12" and DSI II at f/5 using IR and narrowband filters. The scope was in Alt/Az mode for this image.

The image was taken using Envisage and are a combination of 50 x 30 second images in Lum, Ha, SII and OIII

Processing was done with MaxinDL.

Cheers

[astroron (Ron)]

Top Shot Ric
I presume you checked it for a Supernova

[Ric]

Thanks Ron, I actually did a quick comparison against some older images but nothing showed up.

I'd like to capture another image this weekend and run it through my SN search software, you never know what might pop up.

Cheers

[jase (Jason)]

Interesting result Ric. Thanks for sharing. I don't know many that image galaxies in narrowband. A Ha filter can extract lovely details for the HII regions, but not much else in the way of specific emission lines. Galaxies emit across very broad wavelengths, similar to stars, hence they are best imaged via luminance or traditional RGB. Still, I take my hat off to you for trying. The other item which may have compounded the result is the exposure time. Narrowband filters don't pass much energy (based on nm window size), thus require long exposure times to obtain a good S/N ratio. I don't think 30sec subs would have been sufficient. Perhaps stick to nebulae with those NB filters.

[Ric]

Hi Jase thankyou for your comments, they are always valued. Normally I do stick with Lum and Ha with galaxies but as I was chasing planetaries that night I'd thought I'd give it a try.

Being in Alt/Az does tend to be bit limiting exposure wise but I'm hoping to start work on my pier and observatory soon so I can then bring my wedge into play and start increasing the exposure times.

Cheers