Exploring the Suffolk Virginia Night Sky – Astronomy, Astrophotography, Telescopes, EAA – Planets and Stars and Nebula and Galaxies – Looking, Learning, Sharing… Let's see what we can see…
Little warmer than last night, but still cool in the mid-to-upper 30s. Bit more of the waxing Crescent Moon, but not enough to be a bother. Earlier in the day I swapped out scopes on the mount, putting the SVBONY 102ED back out to hunt some galaxies. I had planned to give either NGC 4565, the Needle Galaxy, or the galaxies of the Leo Triplet a try. The Leo Triplet was a bit higher in the sky earlier so I’ll grab some light from NGC 4565 another night.
After putting the SV503 102ED back up on the mount, I balanced the scope. I decided to keep using the SVBONY SV165 30mm F/4 Guide Scope instead of switching back to the SV106, at least for now. After dark I ran the NINA three-point polar alignment, and also the calibrated PHD2. I set up the NINA sequence to start at 8 PM. The forecast called for some clouds to move through after 1 AM. So I set the sequence to run for 4 hours.
The sequence ended at 12:42 AM and the scope was parked in the ScopeDown position. I checked through the subs using the NINA Web Interface (post on this coming soon) and found none were impacted by any clouds. I did have two autofocus failures during the sequence so I need to dig into what happened there a bit.
The Leo Triplet is a group of galaxies approximately 35 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo. Also known as the M66 Group, the Leo Triplet is made up of three spiral galaxies: M65, M66, and NGC 3628. NGC 3628 is also known as the Hamburger Galaxy.
This is 84 x 180 second exposures at 121 gain, 30 offset, and bin 2×2. A little over 4 hours of light from this group of galaxies. Captured with NINA, stacked with Sirilic, and processed in PixInsight. Calibrated with some old darks, but no flats. I probably should reshoot the darks soon, but they still seem to work for now.
M65 is left of center bottom, M66 is left of center top, and NGC 3628 is just up and right of center. The center of M65 is a little washed out, but still some detail in the spiral arms as you move out from center. The dust lane in NGC 3628 definitely has it resembling a hamburger.
I followed my usual PixInsight basic workflow, but then did some experimenting with SetiAstro’s scripts. There were two dust motes that flats would have helped with but I used SetiAstro’s Blemish Blaster to get rid of them. I applied Star Reduction, then GraxPert Denoising of the final stretch, and finally Cosmic Clarity Sharpening to produced the results above. Still a lot to learn, but happy with some of the results so far. Imagine what I might be able to come up with once I figure out what I am doing 🙂
A great night with some nice light from a cool trio of galaxies… clear skies.
