Arp 244: A Grand Cosmic Entanglement (Lilith Gaither)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Corvus (Crv) · Contains: Antennae · Antennae Galaxies · NGC 4038 · NGC 4039 · PGC 37967

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Arp 244: A Grand Cosmic Entanglement

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Arp 244: A Grand Cosmic Entanglement

A pair of interacting galaxies in the constellation Corvus some 45 million light years away. These are two galaxies in the process of colliding and merging.

The nickname "Antennae" comes from the two colliding galaxies' tails of stars, gas, and dust resembling the antennae of an insect.

These galaxies are currently in a "starburst phase" where the colliding gas, dust, and entangled magnetic fields yield a high rate of star formation. Many pink stellar-forming regions are visible in the galactic nuclei.

This object was by far my most difficult capture. In the low South-Southeast my guiding is awful, which means I'm limited on the small scales of detail being blurred out by RA spikes and DEC stiction. It also took a lot to integrate this object. I only see it in the gap between trees and my neighbor's house for about 45 minutes a night. After several nights of capturing it, it starts too close to the neighbor's house to calibrate PHD2 and I'm stuck with 6.3 hours of data to work with.

6.3 hours of mediocre data on a faint object is certainly tough to process, and processing it took a lot of tough choices. In the end, I'm strangely going with my first iteration. No other version could compare to this one. It has its problems, like the ugly, blotchy background. It also doesn't show the star tails very prominently above the background. However, versions bringing out star tails tended to have worse background and didn't look very "natural."

Though, this was a fun target and, despite frustration, I'm happy to share my end result.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3361643
PixInsight job	FC8O2XTS36ZMH911HGSNX5CEOFJ0NKSJ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	12h01m53s.867
RA (top/left)	12h03m02s.658
RA (top/right)	12h00m43s.418
RA (bottom/right)	12h00m44s.831
RA (bottom/left)	12h03m04s.378

Dec (center)	-18°52′44″.74
Dec (top/left)	-18°42′55″.00
Dec (top/right)	-18°43′30″.21
Dec (bottom/right)	-19°02′32″.91
Dec (bottom/left)	-19°01′57″.30

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Arp 244: A Grand Cosmic Entanglement

Arp 244: A Grand Cosmic Entanglement

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Arp 244: A Grand Cosmic Entanglement

Arp 244: A Grand Cosmic Entanglement

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