NGC 7331: A Gregarious Galaxy (Alex Woronow)

NGC 7331: A Gregarious Galaxy

NGC 7331: A Gregarious Galaxy

OTA: RCOS 14.5" f/9.5
Camera: SBIG ST-16803
Observatory: Deep Sky West, NM

Exposures:
R: 23 x 600 sec
G: 20 x 600
B: 17 x 600
L: 35 x 600
Total Exposure time used: 15.8 hours
Image Width: 36.5 arc-minutes

Processing Tools:
Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz (Studio2, Photo AI2), Aurora HDR, Luminar Neo, 3DLUT Creator, Photo Director
Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator, Normalize Scale Gradient
My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool (Excel w/ J. Hunt)

Target Description:
     Similar in size and structure to our Milky Way galaxy, it is a member of the "NGC 7331 Group" or "Deer Lick Group," which consists of NGC7331 and four other galaxies that lie more distant from us. Perhaps the strangest feature of NGC 7331 is that, unlike the vast majority of spiral galaxies, its central bulge rotates in the opposite direction from the rotation of the spiral arms…strange! (Wikipedia)
     This rendering of the galaxy shows a considerable star/gas cloud engulfing the galaxy.

Processing Description:
     These data were old-old-old, by the standards of a quickly evolving hobby—collected in late 2016—old camera, old scope, old mount. Still, with modern image-processing tools, the results are pretty damn good!
     Usually, I start the postprocessing with Topaz Studio2, then move on to other tools. Studio2 is an aggressive image-processing platform emphasizing colors, contrast, and detail to the max. As much as I like that philosophy, it did not work well for this target, so I did the majority of the postprocessing in PhotoDirector with just an afterthought of Studio2. Maybe that switch was driven by the antiquity of the equipment used? In any case, the results don't stink.

Statistics:
Distance: 40M light years
Apparent Magnitude: 10.4
Average Surface: 19.4
Pixel Span at Target: 100 trillion km

Alex Woronow

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8539143
PixInsight job	QO1K78PV8R1U1NEIYTEX7JMR8UC4IK8Y
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	22h37m06s.644
RA (top/left)	22h38m25s.380
RA (top/right)	22h38m36s.683
RA (bottom/right)	22h35m47s.483
RA (bottom/left)	22h35m37s.281

Dec (center)	+34°28′17″.93
Dec (top/left)	+34°09′00″.80
Dec (top/right)	+34°45′24″.17
Dec (bottom/right)	+34°47′31″.65
Dec (bottom/left)	+34°11′07″.36

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