SharpCap Forums

Hello group,
Had a clear and steady night yesterday (not the norm where I live) so I thought I would
practice my imaging skills (what little I have) so as not to completely forget what I have
already learned over the last couple of years since starting down this road.
Thanks to the learned folk here on the Sharpcap forum whose advice I followed, I can truely
say that if the atmosphere allows, and your equipment is modest, great things can be achieved
as is evident in the attached image.
Equipment used was an 80mm refractor of 600mm focal length, a ZWO ASI 224 camera (old hat,
but still working well) and riding atop a Losmandy HGM 200 mount.
Thirty second exposures were used and a gain of 390, with 155 frames in total, more than enough
to bring out some great detail. Note, the gaseous ring surrounding the galaxy's core...amazing.
The slender galaxy at the bottom right is catalogued as MCG-04-52-007 and is of 15th magnitude.
Many other faint galaxies can be seen in the image. Only minor processing with Setiastro suite
was used, such as sharpening and noise reduction. Feel free to comment, good or bad, I don't mind.
Cheers, and all the best to all.
George.

Hi George,

a nice image, well done. I always find getting decent images of small galaxies hard, so I do enjoy seeing those images here on the forums. Apparently the galaxy is only about 6 x 1.5 arc minutes, so it really is a small target compared to the giants like M31.

cheers,

Robin

Hello Robin,
I like exploring the out of the way areas of the sky that tend to be
overlooked by many observers and imagers due to the fact
that these objects tend to be faint and disappointing in the eyepiece,
but with Sharpcap's plate solving, finding these denizens of the deep
sky is a snap.
Many times I have been disappointed with what the eyepiece reveals,
even with my 16" Cassegrain, so my solution to better understand what
I am seeing is to take images through the small scope, then compare that
to what the eyepiece is showing me.
Thank you for the compliment and the time and effort you put into Sharpcap,
which I think is the best software of its type.
Cheers, George.