The Heron Galaxy / NGC 5394 + 5395 / ARP 84
Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2021 8:05 pm
The Heron galaxy (NGC 5394 + 5395 / ARP 84)
Distance: around 160 million lightyears
Surface brightness around magnitude 13.
Apparent size in the sky is roughly 3 Jupiters in a row
Full 3000px resolution here: https://i.ibb.co/wz42DK2/ARP84-Heron.jpg
In total 8 hours integration time.
A pair of galaxies (NGC 5395 left and NGC 5394 right) in the process of colliding. They suspect that the two galaxies already did collide once, resulting in star forming regions. The bright blue in the lower part of NGC 5395 and in the left arm of NGC 5394 are such regions.
Most likely these galaxies will have their gravitational dance for a couple of billions of years before they merge.
This capture is borderline of what my set up can handle when it comes to oversampling and tracking times.
Also tried the Optolong L-eXtreme filter to capture the present Ha but that was too much to asked Did add the data though.
The processing was a real battle of balance between noise, sharpness and color. Also because there are a lot of background galaxies visible.
And like usual I did not "perfected" it with too much denoising and sharpening. For me it's showing captured data and my setup does has it's limits. For me it feels a bit like "cheating" to let it look like something that my setup is not capable of. Plus the real faint stuff gets destroyed or deformed by it.
The fact that I am in Bortle 7 also doesn't help that much but I'm very satisfied with the result smile.gif
Bortle 7
Meade LX200 8" f/10 ACF OTA
Ioptron CEM25EC mount (no guiding)
Baader IR/UV Cut filter
Optolong L-Pro filter
Optolong L-eXtreme filter
Zwo ASI071MC Pro camera
Captured with SharpCap Pro @ -10 Celsius / White balance R50 B50
IR/UV Cut: 46 x 300 sec / Gain 0 / Offset 4
L-Pro: 12 x 600 sec / Gain 0 / Offset 4
L-Pro: 4 x 900 sec / Gain 0 / Offset 4
L-eXtreme: 7 x 600 sec/ Gain 200 / Offset 10
Stacked with DeepSkyStacker
Stacked everything in one go in groups with each group it's own calibration files
Processed with Siril and Photoshop
Siril: Background Extraction and Histogram
Photoshop: Curves, Levels, Camera Raw Filter (blacks, color saturation, clarity, noise reduction, sharpening)
Distance: around 160 million lightyears
Surface brightness around magnitude 13.
Apparent size in the sky is roughly 3 Jupiters in a row
Full 3000px resolution here: https://i.ibb.co/wz42DK2/ARP84-Heron.jpg
In total 8 hours integration time.
A pair of galaxies (NGC 5395 left and NGC 5394 right) in the process of colliding. They suspect that the two galaxies already did collide once, resulting in star forming regions. The bright blue in the lower part of NGC 5395 and in the left arm of NGC 5394 are such regions.
Most likely these galaxies will have their gravitational dance for a couple of billions of years before they merge.
This capture is borderline of what my set up can handle when it comes to oversampling and tracking times.
Also tried the Optolong L-eXtreme filter to capture the present Ha but that was too much to asked Did add the data though.
The processing was a real battle of balance between noise, sharpness and color. Also because there are a lot of background galaxies visible.
And like usual I did not "perfected" it with too much denoising and sharpening. For me it's showing captured data and my setup does has it's limits. For me it feels a bit like "cheating" to let it look like something that my setup is not capable of. Plus the real faint stuff gets destroyed or deformed by it.
The fact that I am in Bortle 7 also doesn't help that much but I'm very satisfied with the result smile.gif
Bortle 7
Meade LX200 8" f/10 ACF OTA
Ioptron CEM25EC mount (no guiding)
Baader IR/UV Cut filter
Optolong L-Pro filter
Optolong L-eXtreme filter
Zwo ASI071MC Pro camera
Captured with SharpCap Pro @ -10 Celsius / White balance R50 B50
IR/UV Cut: 46 x 300 sec / Gain 0 / Offset 4
L-Pro: 12 x 600 sec / Gain 0 / Offset 4
L-Pro: 4 x 900 sec / Gain 0 / Offset 4
L-eXtreme: 7 x 600 sec/ Gain 200 / Offset 10
Stacked with DeepSkyStacker
Stacked everything in one go in groups with each group it's own calibration files
Processed with Siril and Photoshop
Siril: Background Extraction and Histogram
Photoshop: Curves, Levels, Camera Raw Filter (blacks, color saturation, clarity, noise reduction, sharpening)