Spanish Dancer Galaxy - NGC1566 - Adam Lundie - Eatons Hill Observatory

Spanish Dancer Galaxy - NGC1566

08-Dec-2015
Spanish Dancer Galaxy - NGC1566 thumbnail
Spanish Dancer Galaxy - NGC1566
Shot over four consecutive nights, the Spanish Dancer is a spiral galaxy ~38 million light years distant in the southern sky.

Image:

  • 30x 480s luminance bin1x1 + 60x flat + 37x dark + 120x bias
  • 8x 240s luminance bin1x1 + 60x flat + 37x dark + 120x bias
  • 20x 300s red bin2x2 + 24x flat + 40x dark + 120x bias
  • 10x 300s green bin2x2 + 24x flat + 40x dark + 120x bias
  • 10x 300s blue bin2x2 + 24x flat + 40x dark + 120x bias

Total exposure time: 7 hours 52 minutes.

Hardware:

  • Celestron EdgeHD 1100 with CGEM DX mount
  • QSI 683-wsg Camera @ -15°C
  • Astronomik Type 2c LRGB filters
  • Orion StarShoot Autoguider
  • Starlight Xpress Adaptive Optics

Location:

  • Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
  • Good seeing + waning crescent moon.

Software:

  • Captured with AstroArt 6
  • Guiding with PHD2 + PHD_Dither
  • Aladin 8.0: Planning & camera alignment.
  • CCDInspector: Image analysis & rejection
  • CCDStack 2+: Calibrate, align, normalize, stack, curves, combine RGB.
  • Astra Image 4.0: Denoise, upscale RGB.
  • Photoshop CC: Reduce noise, high pass filter, shrink stars, shadows/highlights, integrate L+RGB, color balance, contrast.

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