ARP299 deep sky project
Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2021 3:44 pm
I forgot about this one: my ARP299 / NGC3690 deeps sky project is finished
In total it's a bit over 8 hours of data, captured over roughly 2 months (yes, the amount of clear skies was/is terrible here ). The focus really is into the deep, so as a result the object itself is rather noisy but the majority that's visible all around it are galaxies.
NGC3690 is an object where 2 galaxies are colliding. It is close to the middle in the "box" of Ursa Major and is also an area with a lot of far away galaxies and quasars. These I tried to capture as much as possible.
And I gathered enough data to do do multiple things with it: a color version, an inverted black/white version with captions and an animated GIF showing the star movement from 1953 and 2021.
For all this I used Aladin a lot and also the NED catalogue on https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/
And per their request: "This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration."
1) Color version
This is the original for which I used the Baader Neodymium Skyglow filter and the Optolong L-Pro filter.
At a certain point it became clear that no observable data was being added and noise was not getting any less. I edited it with the purpose to bring out as much as possible but not too much noise.
Quite a challenge because my set-up just doesn't have the right resolution for this (which doesn't stop me). The visible stars have a more sharp edge. Almost everything else visible as blobs and faint star-shaped objects are galaxies and a few quasars.
What is also visible, but very faint, is a "dust lane" (I don't know what it's called). It starts from to the right from the center of NGC 3690 and runs to the right. At first I thought that the capture was wrong, but it turns out to be there.
Link to full 4600px color version: https://i.ibb.co/tCxkZHC/ARP299-NGC3690-Color.jpg
2) Inverted black/white
Actually the "showpiece" of it all. This is made up of the same data as the color version. However, since it is negative and black and white, you can edit much more aggressively. So there is also much more visible.
I also put some of the notations in here, just for fun actually There was way too much to mark everything, so I chose random objects and looked up information about them.
A G stands for galaxy, QSO is a quasar. A number in gray is the magnitude and a number in red is the distance in billion light years.
The faintest visible is a galaxy with magnitude 22.1. It's in the top right corner.
The farthest is quasar at 11.4 billion light years. This is at the top left corner.
Link to full 4700px version: https://i.ibb.co/y4nfFCW/ARP-299-NGC369 ... -white.jpg
3) Animated GIF 2000px
Since I was busy anyway, I made this one too to show star motion over 68 years. The GIF consists of my image and an image of the Mount Palomar Schmidt telescope from 1953. This is a 1.20 meter Schmidt telescope. It's a good indication too on the progression, since I have a 0.203 meter telescope with almost as much as visible data. Only they had a much shorter integration time wink.gif
I haven't been able to discover anything new, so only the movement of the stars is visible. Which is still a very cool thing of course.
The year is shown at the bottom right.
I overlaid and aligned the two shots in Photoshop. Saved as GIF and made the animated GIF with Microsoft GIF Animator.
Link to full 2000px version: https://i.ibb.co/WDkzX2R/ARP-299-NGC369 ... ed-GIF.gif
Data
Resolution: 0.506 arcsec/px
Focal length: 1948.53 mm
Pixel size: 4.78 µm
Field of view: 41' 41.63" x 27' 41.68"
Bortle 7/8
Meade LX200 8" f/10 ACF OTA
Ioptron CEM25EC mount (no guiding)
Baader Neodymium Skyglow filter
Optolong L-Pro filter
Zwo ASI071MC Pro camera
Captured met SharpCap Pro @ -10 Celsius
Baader filter: 38 x 120 sec / Gain 120 / Offset 8
Baader filter: 109 x 140 sec / Gain 0 / Offset 4
Optolong filter: 22 x 410 sec / Gain 10 / Offset 4
Stacked each set separately in DeepSkyStacker
Processed in Siril and Photoshop
Siril: Background Extraction and Histogram for each stack and save as TIF
Photoshop: layered the 3 stack on each other and aligned them. Camera RAW Filter, levels, curves, Neat Image noise reduction filter.
In total it's a bit over 8 hours of data, captured over roughly 2 months (yes, the amount of clear skies was/is terrible here ). The focus really is into the deep, so as a result the object itself is rather noisy but the majority that's visible all around it are galaxies.
NGC3690 is an object where 2 galaxies are colliding. It is close to the middle in the "box" of Ursa Major and is also an area with a lot of far away galaxies and quasars. These I tried to capture as much as possible.
And I gathered enough data to do do multiple things with it: a color version, an inverted black/white version with captions and an animated GIF showing the star movement from 1953 and 2021.
For all this I used Aladin a lot and also the NED catalogue on https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/
And per their request: "This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration."
1) Color version
This is the original for which I used the Baader Neodymium Skyglow filter and the Optolong L-Pro filter.
At a certain point it became clear that no observable data was being added and noise was not getting any less. I edited it with the purpose to bring out as much as possible but not too much noise.
Quite a challenge because my set-up just doesn't have the right resolution for this (which doesn't stop me). The visible stars have a more sharp edge. Almost everything else visible as blobs and faint star-shaped objects are galaxies and a few quasars.
What is also visible, but very faint, is a "dust lane" (I don't know what it's called). It starts from to the right from the center of NGC 3690 and runs to the right. At first I thought that the capture was wrong, but it turns out to be there.
Link to full 4600px color version: https://i.ibb.co/tCxkZHC/ARP299-NGC3690-Color.jpg
2) Inverted black/white
Actually the "showpiece" of it all. This is made up of the same data as the color version. However, since it is negative and black and white, you can edit much more aggressively. So there is also much more visible.
I also put some of the notations in here, just for fun actually There was way too much to mark everything, so I chose random objects and looked up information about them.
A G stands for galaxy, QSO is a quasar. A number in gray is the magnitude and a number in red is the distance in billion light years.
The faintest visible is a galaxy with magnitude 22.1. It's in the top right corner.
The farthest is quasar at 11.4 billion light years. This is at the top left corner.
Link to full 4700px version: https://i.ibb.co/y4nfFCW/ARP-299-NGC369 ... -white.jpg
3) Animated GIF 2000px
Since I was busy anyway, I made this one too to show star motion over 68 years. The GIF consists of my image and an image of the Mount Palomar Schmidt telescope from 1953. This is a 1.20 meter Schmidt telescope. It's a good indication too on the progression, since I have a 0.203 meter telescope with almost as much as visible data. Only they had a much shorter integration time wink.gif
I haven't been able to discover anything new, so only the movement of the stars is visible. Which is still a very cool thing of course.
The year is shown at the bottom right.
I overlaid and aligned the two shots in Photoshop. Saved as GIF and made the animated GIF with Microsoft GIF Animator.
Link to full 2000px version: https://i.ibb.co/WDkzX2R/ARP-299-NGC369 ... ed-GIF.gif
Data
Resolution: 0.506 arcsec/px
Focal length: 1948.53 mm
Pixel size: 4.78 µm
Field of view: 41' 41.63" x 27' 41.68"
Bortle 7/8
Meade LX200 8" f/10 ACF OTA
Ioptron CEM25EC mount (no guiding)
Baader Neodymium Skyglow filter
Optolong L-Pro filter
Zwo ASI071MC Pro camera
Captured met SharpCap Pro @ -10 Celsius
Baader filter: 38 x 120 sec / Gain 120 / Offset 8
Baader filter: 109 x 140 sec / Gain 0 / Offset 4
Optolong filter: 22 x 410 sec / Gain 10 / Offset 4
Stacked each set separately in DeepSkyStacker
Processed in Siril and Photoshop
Siril: Background Extraction and Histogram for each stack and save as TIF
Photoshop: layered the 3 stack on each other and aligned them. Camera RAW Filter, levels, curves, Neat Image noise reduction filter.