NGC 253, Sculptor Galaxy, 21 Sep 2012 (David Dearden)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Sculptor (Scl) · Contains: NGC 253 · Sculptor Filament · Silver Coin

NGC 253, Sculptor Galaxy, 21 Sep 2012, David Dearden

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NGC 253, Sculptor Galaxy, 21 Sep 2012

Found the Sculptor Galaxy easily tonight, beginning just after it came over the limb of Maple Mountain. This time I think the paucity of stars helped because I quickly recognized an asterism and got lined up. Intermittent wind gusts. Chiller at 1.5 A 7.0 V 10 °C. High dither, settling at 0.5. I could see the effects of changing seeing in the subframes as the stars got smaller as the night progressed and the galaxy got higher in the sky (but it was never very high from my location!).

Reprocessed with StarTools HDR:Reveal Core, Magic:Shrink, Magic:Tighten, Repair:Warp, & Life:Moderate

Date: 21 Sep 2012

Subject: NGC 253, Sculptor Galaxy

Scope: AT8IN+High Point Scientific coma corrector + 0.5x Antares telereducer

Filter: None

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: Orion ST80 + DSI Ic + PHD

Camera: DSI IIc, Cooled 1.5 A 7.0 V (10 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.2, medium RA-only dither

Exposure: 26 x 300 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.5 SD stack

Processing: Digital development with strong sharpening, Keller stretch middle of histogram, power stretch, star reduction, saturation boost, GreyCStoration in Neb 3; CS6 two layers: Astronomy Tools star color enhance, deep space, space noise reduction in one, high pass filter in the other, applied a Gaussian blurred layer mask to enhance the dust lanes. Flattened, selected green color range, created an adjustment layer, desaturated a couple of times. AT local contrast enhance, then less crunchy more fuzzy.

Original
Final
B

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6456192
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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