Spiral Galaxy Caldwell 101
11-Jul-2016
Caldwell 101 is a spiral galaxy about 31 million light-years away, tilted towards our line of sight. It is thought to be one of the most Milky Way-like spiral galaxies in our immediate vicinity. It also has at least one distorted companion galaxy similar to the Magellanic Clouds.
Image:
- 54x 600s Luminance bin1x1 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 25x 300s Red bin2x2 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 24x 300s Green bin2x2 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
- 24x 300s Blue bin2x2 + 20 flat + 50x dark + 120x bias
Total exposure 15 hours 5 minutes.
Hardware:
- Celestron EdgeHD 1100
- SkyWatcher EQ8 Pro Mount
- Celestron 0.7x EdgeHD focal reducer
- QSI 683-ws Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik Typ 2c LRGB filters
- Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
- Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
- Starlight Xpress Adaptive Optics
- Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II
Location:
- Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
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, deconvolution, combine RGB.
- Photoshop CC: Reduce noise, high pass filter, minimum filter, curves, combine L+RGB, color balance.