Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Tucana (Tuc)  ·  Contains:  47 Tuc Cluster  ·  NGC 104
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47 Tucanae Globular Cluster in RGB, Ian Parr
47 Tucanae Globular Cluster in RGB
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47 Tucanae Globular Cluster in RGB

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
47 Tucanae Globular Cluster in RGB, Ian Parr
47 Tucanae Globular Cluster in RGB
Powered byPixInsight

47 Tucanae Globular Cluster in RGB

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Description

47 Tucanae, or 47 Tuc (also designated NGC 104) is a globular cluster located in the constellation Tucana about 15,000 light years away from Earth and is about 120 light years in diameter.
47 Tuc can be seen with the naked eye, with an apparent magnitude of 4.1 and  appears about 44 arcminutes across. It is the second brightest globular cluster after Omega Centauri, and telescopically reveals about ten thousand stars, many appearing within a small dense central core.

I was lucky enough to meet up with Peter Read of SDM Telescopes when he was delivering and finishing the setup an new 18" DOB (collimation at the eyepiece!) at the Astronomical Society of New South Wales' Wiruna property on a very good night as few years back.  I offered a warm 8mm Ethos from my pocket and he asked if I had anything more powerful, so I dug out a 3mm Radian and we dived into into the heart of 47 Tucanae ... it looked like an open cluster! Unbelievable optics on an amazing mount with an exquisite Mark Sutching mirror.

All fresh data of variable quality over the last week but beggars can't be choosers and there was a new Pixinsight update to work with. GHS, BlurXTerminator and NoiseXterminator on a tight leash leash and creating lightness masks with ACDNR makes a huge difference. Needless to say less is more and my first run looked like a regurgitated dog's breakfast so back to the SPCC linear image and now a result I can live with until I can get more clean data. At this time of year it is quite low and I have a huge tree adjacnet to the SCP to dodge but I hope to go bush in the new year and will look for a deep run under Bortle 2 skies on this magnificant object.

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47 Tucanae Globular Cluster in RGB, Ian Parr