NGC 2903 Spiral Galaxy
A magnificent spiral galaxy with TEC 140 and Atik 460
Many astronomers consider NGC 2903 the best and brightest galaxy that isn't included in the famous Messier list and are surprised Messier himself didn't include it in his catalogue. It is very photogenic and brighter than several other galaxies that are included in Messier's list such as M65 and M66. It is located in Leo to the right of the "sickle" of Leo and is about 30 million light years distant.
Full resolution image here (opens in a new tab). If you open the full resolution image you will see many tiny, remote galaxies in the depths of the Universe.
Technical Detail
Imaged with my TEC140 telescope and Atik 460 CCD camera with Astrodon E series LRGB filters on the 25th and 26th March 2022. The data set is as follows with the luminance binned 1x1 and the RGB at 2x2:
Lum 24 x 300s ; Red 12 x 180s ; Blue 9 x 180s ; Green 34 x 180s
(yes, I know that's a lot of Green! I overdid the green because I misconfigured the NINA automation software but decided to throw it all into the image anyway).
This gives a total integration time of four hours and 45 minutes in total exposure.
Developed in PixInsight for all pre and post processing. Since it is a good data set all I did after preprocessing was combine the master LRGB files, apply DBE to remove background gradients (and since I am in Bortle 5 sub-urban neighbourhood there are security lights going on and off all night). I then applied Blur Exterminator and some noise reduction. I then stretched the image and applied a bit of colour saturation. That's all I did. It took about 45 minutes in total and most of that time was waiting for WBPP to complete.
Southern Orion in a Wide Field View
An image of Orion from January 2023 taken with a QHY268C cooled astronomy camera mated with a Samyang 135mm lens to give a very wide field view.
Full sized image here (opens in a new tab).
The image is composed of 56 x 120s exposures at F2.8. I used my wide field rig with autofocus to get the stars and nebulosity sharp and tight. I captured flats, darks and dark-flats. Mounted on NEQ6 with a guider scope and image data captured with NINA. All pre and post development is done in PixInsight.
Captured over two nights 20th and 23rd January 2023 when Orion was high to the south. From my back yard in Saxondale, Nottinghamshire - suburban, Bortle 4-5.
I have also captured the Constellation of Orion here.
