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FROM THE OBSERVATORY · 20-Aug-2017

Grus Quartet

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Grus Quartet
The Grus-Quartet consists of four large spiral galaxies, between 63 and 99 million light years away, which are so close to each other that they are interacting.
BEHIND THE IMAGE

Notes from the session

Image:
75x 450s Luminance bin2x2
18x 450s Red bin2x2
18x 450s Green bin2x2
18x 450s Blue bin2x2


Total exposure 16 hours 8 minutes.

Hardware:
Skywatcher Black Diamond ED120
SkyWatcher EQ8 Pro Mount
QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
Astronomik Typ2 LRGB filters
Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II



Location:
Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
Imaged over 3 nights, new moon.



Software:
Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 9
Captured with AstroArt 6
Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
FocusLock live focusing
CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack, deconvolution, remove gradients, combine RGB.
Photoshop CC: Shadows/highlights, combine L+RGB, noise reduction, curves, adjust colour balance, saturation, crop.