Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Grus (Gru)  ·  Contains:  HD219369  ·  HD219380  ·  HD219494  ·  HD219630  ·  IC 5294  ·  IC 5308  ·  NGC 7552  ·  NGC 7582  ·  NGC 7590  ·  NGC 7599
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Grus Quartet = NGC 7552 + NGC 7582 + NGC 7590 + NGC 7599 - Revisited #1, Gary JONES
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Grus Quartet = NGC 7552 + NGC 7582 + NGC 7590 + NGC 7599 - Revisited #1

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Grus Quartet = NGC 7552 + NGC 7582 + NGC 7590 + NGC 7599 - Revisited #1, Gary JONES
Powered byPixInsight

Grus Quartet = NGC 7552 + NGC 7582 + NGC 7590 + NGC 7599 - Revisited #1

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Description

This is my second image of the Grus Quartet, using the data from my original image here, plus another 30 subs captured the following night. This allowed me to bring out more detail in the fainter outer regions of these galaxies, to enhance detail in the galaxy cores, and to reduce background noise.

I was very pleased to see more detail in the spiral arms of NGC 7552, which can be seen in the top left-hand corner of this image.

The Grus quartet was very close to zenith in the early evening, however this was not an ideal night for imaging - the moon was at 75% and separation from Grus was only about 30°, so the subs suffered from significant moon glow.

I stacked the subs using PixInsight, with 2x drizzle followed by an Integer Resample down by a factor 2. Many thanks to Rowan @Rowan Prangley for his suggestion to use this approach - it worked very well.

Then I used StarXTerninator to separate the galaxies and stars onto separate layers for further processing using NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator and Affinity Photo.

Although the Quartet is a fairly large target at 45', each galaxy is only about 5' x 2.5', so I was very pleased to capture a reasonable amount of detail in each of the four galaxies. I was particularly pleased with the detail in the spiral arms of NGC 7552, which can be seen in the top left-hand corner of this image.

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Grus Quartet = NGC 7552 + NGC 7582 + NGC 7590 + NGC 7599 - Revisited #1, Gary JONES