NGC 2146 Dusty Hand Galaxy in RGBHa

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Menno555
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NGC 2146 Dusty Hand Galaxy in RGBHa

#1

Post by Menno555 »

NGC 2146 is an atypical barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis close to Polaris. This galaxy is also called Dusty Hand Galaxy because of the shape of a skeletal hand in the core.
It is located about 70 million light-years away and its typical shape was caused by a near collision with another galaxy about 0.8 billion years ago. The culprit is likely NGC 2146a.
This near collision has resulted in NGC 2146 becoming a so-called starbust galaxy: new stars are being formed at a relatively fast rate.

That is why I also did captures with the Optolong L-eNhance filter to see if I could also capture and process some Ha of that star formation and that worked out reasonably well: a few red areas at the top right of the core and in the rim itself.
It could have been much more but the only (almost cloudless) moment was on the night of January 17/18 with of course a 95% moon high in the sky :(
Last month I was able to make the RGB shots between the clouds on 3 different nights. A total of 6:40 hours of data.

The 3000px version can be seen here: https://i.ibb.co/JcrSdYt/NGC-2146-RGBHa.jpg

Bortle 6/7
Meade LX200 8" f/10 ACF OTA
Ioptron CEM25EC mount (no guiding)
Baader IR/UV Cut filter
Optolong L-eNhance filter
Zwo ASI071MC Pro camera

Captured with SharpCap Pro / White balance R50 B50
Baarder IR/UV Cut: 50 x 300 sec / Gain 90 / Offset 4
Optolong L-eNhance: 15 x 600 sec / Gain 90 / Offset 4
20 x darks. And 50x flats + 50x darkflats per filter

Stacked with SiriL
Crop and Histogram

Photoshop: Ha in Red channel mixed, Camera Raw Filter (blacks, clarity, contrast, color, noise reduction), resolution to 3000px.

NGC 2146 RGBHasm.jpg
NGC 2146 RGBHasm.jpg (423.68 KiB) Viewed 597 times
timh
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Joined: Mon Aug 26, 2019 5:50 pm

Re: NGC 2146 Dusty Hand Galaxy in RGBHa

#2

Post by timh »

Good detailed image of quite a spooky and intriguing object - and especially so with a bright moon! Did you integrate the L enhance frames mixed in with the rest ? Just wondering whether it might be an opportunity for the L extreme to just pull out the HA specifically and add into the red channel ? - although at 70 M ly the HA would likely be red-shifted up towards the long wavelength edge of its window so maybe less efficient? Anyway nice image.
Tim
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Menno555
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Joined: Mon Apr 20, 2020 2:19 pm
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Re: NGC 2146 Dusty Hand Galaxy in RGBHa

#3

Post by Menno555 »

Thanks Tim!

It's indeed an intriguing object. The way it looks, the apparent size and the history made it irresistible for me ;)
I did think about using the L-eXtreme but I'm almost sure the signal is too weak for my equipment and location to be captured. For M51 and M106 it works fine cause there is a lot of Ha there. So I settled for the L-eNhance.
And I first indeed try to mix the frames but there was so little data in the eNhance captures other then the core and the Ha spots, it didn't work. So I only merged the red channels and that gave this result.

Menno
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