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.
M74 Galaxy with TEC 140 and Atik 460
M74 is a magnificent spiral galaxy about 32 million light years away in the constellation of Pisces. It has quite low surface brightness which makes it quite a hard galaxy to observe. It bears a passing resemblance to M101 I always think, but is much dimmer.
Imaged on 15th December 2022 when to The South. I used my TEC 140 refractor with its field flattener, an Atik 460 CCD camera with Astrodon E series 1.25" LRGB filters. All on my MESU 200 mount which was off-axis guided. The objective lens was very dirty and I cleaned it the following day. Despite that, the image came out quite nice.
This image is made from quite a modest data set comprising the following
LUM > 12 x 300s ; Red > 9 x 300s ; Green 9 x 300s ; Blue > 9 x 300s
Which gives a total integration (exposure) time of three hours and fifteen minutes in total.
I captured the data with NINA software and did all processing with PixInsight.
M81 / M82 Group and IFN with Samyang 135mm
The M81 and M82 galaxies in Ursa Major showing the background Integrated Flux Nebula.
These are a well known and popular pair of galaxies and can be seen with binoculars. I've imaged them here in a very wide field with a DSLR camera lens - the Samyang 135mm connected to a G2-8300 CCD camera and filter assembly using Astrodon LRGB filters
The cloudy dust that is visible is not passing cloud! Rather, it is the extremely faint dust and gas that exists in the space between the galaxies - in intergalactic space. Hence it is called the Integrated Flux Nebula or IFN. It is extremely faint and is only visible with very long exposures and integration times. Careful processing is needed not to inadvertently cut it out of the image.
Technical Data
Imaged in my back yard in Nottingham in March 2020 with Samyang 135mm and G2-8300 CCD camera on a NEQ6 mount. I used a separate guide scope. I only got round to processing this data set in 2023 having completely forgotten about it!
All exposures 300 seconds in length and binned 1x1.
Lum > 24 ; Blue > 15; Red > 15; Green > 14
This gives a total of Lum > 120mins; Blue > 75mins; Red > 75 mins; Green > 70 mins
For a total integration (exposure) time of 5 hours and 40 minutes for the image.
M33 Galaxy in Triangulum FSQ85 with G2-8300
M33 is a galaxy about 2.8 - 3 million light years away in the constellation of Triangulum. Along with M33, it is one of the Local Group of galaxies with which our own Milky Way galaxy shares the local universe. M33 is the most distant object that the human naked eye can see, appearing as a ghostly white smudge on a very dark night from clear skies. It is a magnificent spiral galaxy about half the size of our own galaxy and because of its close proximity to us it appears very large in our skies and is am oft-photographed object by many, myself included.
I've imaged M33 multiple times. For example, with the same FSQ85 telescope here and also at a closer image scale with the TEC140 refractor here.
This time I have set the galaxy in a slightly wider field by utilising the FSQ85 0.73 reducer. I used the Moravian G2-8300 CCD camera and Astrodon RGB filters all binned 1x1. I did not use a separate luminance channel.
The data collected for the image was collected from my backyard observatory in Nottingham, UK on 4/5 and 8th of November 2021 and is a modest data set of 15 x 300s exposures in each of the three filters to give a total integration of nearly four hours. However, because of the proximity of M33 and its brightness this data set has revealed a very pleasing, detailed and colourful result. What do you think?
Image data captured with NINA automation software and processed in PixInsight.
Close Up Study of The Great Andromeda Galaxy M31 with TEC140 and FSQ85
M31 is one of the most favoured and popular imaging targets in the night sky; it is bright, large and very photogenic. I have imaged this galaxy numerous times, for example, in this LRGB version and in this OSC version. Since the galaxy is so large, each of these images is set in a wide field, one of 3 degrees horizontally and 2 degrees vertically across the field of view which equates to six times the diameter of the full moon. Many newcomers do not appreciate how large these objects are in the sky. Large but VERY dim!
The above image is at a resolution of 4.16arcsec/pixel. On such a large object as M31 this allows the entire galaxy to be imaged in one field of view on a wide field refractor such as the FSQ85 but does not allow for a "closer in" and more detailed image.
In order to do the latter, I created a mosaic of four panels to image the right hand side "west" of the galaxy at the greater resolution with my TEC140 and Atik 460. All I needed is the luminance data and then I could use this to blend with the lower resolution OSC data at the top of this post in Photoshop.
Each of the four luminance panels is a total of 90 minutes of 300 sec exposures captured with the TEC140 and Atik460 CCD camera with a Astrodon luminance filter. The luminance image above is a total of six hours of imaging time. I then processed these four images and knitted them together in PixInsight. I then registered this four-panel luminance with the OSC data at the top of the post and then used it as a luminance layer to give the best of both worlds; the colour of the OSC/FSQ85 wide field image with the detail of the TEC140/Atik460 image!
I hope you like it! :)
M108 Galaxy in Ursa Major, TEC140
M108 is a galaxy about 45 million light years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. It is sometimes called the surfboard galaxy because of its resemblance to a surfboard. Note the huge number of tiny, distant galaxies in the background. These are hundreds and in some cases up to two billion light years away from us.
Technical Information
I imaged M108 from my backyard observatory in Nottingham, UK on 4-5 April 2021 (two imaging sessions) when M108 was almost directly overhead. Conditions were very cold and frosty with good seeing and transparency. I used my TEC140 refractor and Atik 460 CCD camera with Astrodon E series Gen LRGB filters (1.25"). There is almost 9.5 hours of data in this image consisting of:
Lum > 42 x 300s; Red > 24 x 300s; Green > 24x300s; Blue 24 x 300s
Everything was binned 1x1.
Image data was captured using Sequence Generator Pro software and the equipment was was guided using OAG on my MESU 200 mount. Processed with PixInsight.
I hope you like it!
Full size image here (opens in new tab).
M63 - The Sunflower Galaxy
M63 is a magnificent spiral galaxy located in the Northern constellation of Canes Venatici, about 30 million light years away. The galaxy is a member of the M51 group. There are lots of faint galaxies in the background.
Technical Data
Full resolution image here (opens in new tab)
M63, often called the Sunflower Galaxy because of its resemblance to that flower, is a spiral galaxy about 27 million light years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici. It is a member of the M51 group of galaxies.
I captured the data for this image of the galaxy from my back yard observatory in Nottingham, UK over the nights of 4th and 5th of May 2021 when M63 was high near the zenith. Most of the data was captured in the middle of the night on an automated basis whilst I was asleep in bed! I used my TEC140 refractor and Atik 460 CCD camera with Astrodon E Series LRGB filters. I used off-axis guiding on my MESU200 mount.
Integration is a total of nine hours comprised of:
Luminance > 30 x 300s binned 1×1 ; Red > 22 x 300s 1×1 ; Green > 24 x 300s 1×1 ; Blue > 24 x 300s 1×1 to give a total of about 8.5 hours of integration time. Captured with SGP pro and processed in PixInsight.
Annotated and inverted versions of the galaxy shown above. The annotated version shows the many, extremely distant background galaxies present in the image, some of which are billions of lightyears away.
The finder chart to the left shows the location of the galaxy.
The image at the top of this page is 42 arc-minutes in width and 32 arc-minutes in height at an image scale of 0.927 arc-seconds/pixel.
The Hubble Deep Field (from Nottingham)
Background
The Hubble Deep Field (hereon-after the HDF) is an iconic image from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). In 1995 the HST was instructed to stare at a tiny patch of space in the constellation of Ursa Major that is almost devoid of stars and is far from the plane of the galaxy, enabling the telescope to stare out of the galaxy into the depths of the Universe. It did this for about 190 hours with a total of 340 exposures and in so doing captured some of the most distant galaxies in the Universe, some of which are an astonishing 12 billion light years away.
The HDF is located above the "bowl" of The Plough (or Big Dipper as it is called in North America) asterism in Ursa Major as can be seen in the left image above. The right image is the actual HST, a composite of red, green and blue to create a colour picture. No ground based telescope can capture such an image since the galaxies are so remote and faint that the slightest atmospheric turbulence will blur out the faint galaxies. However, the brighter members are available to ground based telescopes as we shall see later. Read more about the HDF here.
The HDF image was created with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) that was installed on the first Hubble servicing mission in 1993 and is an iconic instrument that created many of Hubble's most famous images. By today's standards its CCD sensor was tiny and comprised of three 800x800 sensors in a "L" shape. The missing top right of the image was used for the planetary section of the WFPC2 camera and just uses the bottom left quarter of the top left segment. By utilising digital manipulation techniques the four imaging quadrants could be stitched together to create a composite image. The WFPC2 was replaced by the WFPC3 in another servicing mission in 2009 that has a more modern (by 2009 standards) sensor that offers a complete image corner to corner. The WFPC2 was returned to earth and is displayed at a NASA museum.
Whilst very interesting, this is not just a pretty, semantic picture - it holds extremely important information about the early universe and the evolution of galaxies. Other Deep Field images were subsequently taken with the HST in other parts of the sky and the deep Universe looks almost identical everywhere we look, proving the cosmological principle that the Universe is essentially identical, everywhere, as a result of the Big Bang 14 billion years ago.
My Version
I took it on myself as a small project to image the Hubble Deep Field myself. Ursa Major and the HDF region is directly overhead at my location in Nottingham, UK in spring time. I downloaded the HDF coordinates from the Internet and used my TEC140 and Atik 460 CCD camera and captured 6 x 600s exposures with a luminance filter. There is no point in acquiring colour data for such remote objects. I used these to create this image:
There are many extremely remote and faint fuzzy galaxies across this entire image. I then plate solved this image in PixInsight above to give me the galaxies surrounding the HDF as indicated on the left. Note the PGC galaxies. I used these to zoom in on the Hubble Deep Field area.
To the left is a zoomed in view of the Deep Field. The HDF is located just above the middle star that is one third of the way up from the bottom of the image.
Above is the HDF annotated by superimposing the HST version of the HDF and rotating and scaling it in Photoshop to match my image. You can clearly see the four brighter galaxies (about five billion light years away) and a few of the others in my image.
It is quite remarkable what amateur equipment is capable of these days!
The Leo Triplet with TEC140 and QHY268C
The Leo Triplet is a popular and famous group of galaxies in the constellation of Leo, best viewed in late winter/early spring in the Northern Hemisphere. They are often imaged together like this as the triplet or as individual galaxies.
They are located about 35 million light years away and consists of the Messier galaxies M66 (top left in the image), M65 (bottom left ) and to the right we have NGC 3628, commonly called The Hamburger Galaxy.
The galaxies are easily visible in a small to mid-sized telescope as faint smudges in this isosceles triangular pattern. The galaxies are sometimes called the M66 Group but ask any astronomer and they will immediately know what you mean if you mention the Leo Triplet! Another famous galaxy group in Leo is the M96 group.
Technical Details
Image captured from my back yard observatory in Nottingham, UK on the 20th March 2021 just to the East of the Meridian line. I captured 40 x 180s exposures with my QHY268C One-Shot-Colour camera on my TEC140 refractor using off-axis guiding on my MESU 200 mount. The only filter I used was a LDAS Light pollution filter since I live in a residential area with Bortle 5 sky conditions.
Seeing and transparency were terrible and I debated with myself long and hard whether I bothered imaging at all on that night. However, since in the UK we have just endured the worst winter for cloud I can remember in 30 years of practical astronomy, I decided that beggars can't be choosers and I went ahead with it anyway. I am glad I did since the outcome is not too bad.
Ideally it could use more exposure time and I will add to this as and when we get some more clear sky time.
Images exposures captured with Sequence Generator Pro and processed with PixInsight and Photoshop CC.
The image above is a crop of the image below. I include this since some people my prefer the wider field.
