NGC 1365 lum only Near full moon

[kinetic (Steve)]

Hi,

I captured NGC 1365 in Fornax this morning after 2 weeks of
the worst weather.
Not great DS imaging conditions with the nearly full moon not far
away but glad to have something on the hard drive at long last.

I'd just closed the dome when I noticed the Nova Sagittarii thread!

I think focus was a little off in this and the shot could have used flats.
Lots of dust on the CCD........excuses

Steve

[Alchemy (Clive)]

good to ge anything during the winter time i feel, how far from the meridian did you capture this one.... i think it crosses 7 ish in the morning.

be interesting to see one almost on the meridian (best seeing) an if you say the focus was just a teeny bit off... do you use a focusing mask ?

cheers clive

[multiweb (Marc)]

Wow! My favourite galaxy. Love barred spirals. I'd love to be able to have a go at that one but it's pretty small hey? I wasn't aware it's up at this time of the year.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Nice shot, Steve

Cleans them cameras!!!!

[telecasterguru (Frank)]

Not too bad at all.

Frank

[kinetic (Steve)]

Originally Posted by Alchemy

how far from the meridian did you capture this one.... i think it crosses 7 ish in the morning.
be interesting to see one almost on the meridian (best seeing) an if you say the focus was just a teeny bit off... do you use a focusing mask ?

cheers clive

I owe you a better shot than that Clive....now I see it on an inside LCD
it looks terrible. The dome CRT always makes things look clearer for
some reason.
No focusing mask, only estimated this one but I didn't let the scope
cool enough...at the end of this set it was obviously getting fuzzy.
A quick check of Cartes at 4:30am says it was 45deg up.

Originally Posted by multiweb

Wow! My favourite galaxy. I wasn't aware it's up at this time of the year.

Me neither Marc until Clive pointed it out to me.
Small?...I reckon it's huge! I didn't expect it to be this big on the CCD.

Steve

[kinetic (Steve)]

The trouble with repros is you can never get something from nothing

When I culled out the worst frames from the 217 to eliminate
the elongated stars....the noise comes up
I know from experience that, even on a moonlit night,
if I can have the faint spiral arms JUST above the noise threshold, then
my method of taking LOTS of short exposures brings up the data
out of the noise.
However, if I cull the frame list a bit, the data sinks back into the noise.

This repro has slightly sharper stars....no sharpening or noise smoothing
has been applied....but the noise is higher.
Again, looks bearable on the dome CRT...but shocking on the laptop.

NEEDS no moon...needs lots more frames...flats...all the obvious
Also attached is the galaxy core 2x with a different curve applied.

Steve

[Starkler (Geoff)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Wow! My favourite galaxy. Love barred spirals. I'd love to be able to have a go at that one but it's pretty small hey? I wasn't aware it's up at this time of the year.

Actually its a pretty big one as far as image size goes. Actually what was captured here is about as much as I can see visually with a 10" scope.

With my 15 in dark skies im able to see up to the end of the arms where they hook around the corner.

[kinetic (Steve)]

How stoopid do you think I felt when I did a clean and check
of the filterwheel/ IR filter and CCD, only to find that the wheel
was midway between Red and clear(empty).

So this shot was probably affected.

Steve

[RB (Andrew)]

Steve despite the conditions, the moon and the filter wheel problem, it's come up pretty well I reckon.

I know what you mean about CRTs, I was shocked when I switched to my LCD screens and viewed some of my old images.

Anyway mate looking forward to more.