Southern Pinwheel Galaxy M83 - Adam Lundie - Eatons Hill Observatory

Southern Pinwheel Galaxy M83

11-Apr-2016
Southern Pinwheel Galaxy M83 thumbnail
Southern Pinwheel Galaxy M83
The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy approximately 15 million light-years away. It is one of the closest and brightest barred spiral galaxies in the sky.

Image:

  • 59x 300s Luminance bin2x2 + 35 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
  • 50x 150s Red bin3x3 + 15 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
  • 50x 150s Green bin3x3 + 15 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
  • 28x 150s Blue bin3x3 + 15 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias

Total integration 10 hours 15 minutes.

Hardware:

  • Celestron EdgeHD 1100
  • SkyWatcher EQ8 Pro Mount
  • Celestron 0.7x EdgeHD focal reducer
  • QSI 683-wsg Camera @ -15°C
  • Astronomik Typ 2c RGB filters
  • Orion StarShoot Autoguider
  • Foresight Innovations On Axis Guider
  • Starlight Xpress Adaptive Optics

Location:

  • Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
  • Imaged over 5 nights.
  • Average seeing + new moon.

Software:

  • Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 9
  • Captured with AstroArt 6
  • Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
  • CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
  • CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, stack, combine RGB.
  • Photoshop CC: shadows/highlights, high pass filter, merge L+RGB, color balance, saturation, minimum filter, reduce noise.

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