Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  IC 3571  ·  NGC 4562  ·  NGC 4565  ·  Needle Galaxy
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NGC 4565, The Needle Galaxy, 3 May 2013, David Dearden
NGC 4565, The Needle Galaxy, 3 May 2013
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NGC 4565, The Needle Galaxy, 3 May 2013

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Description

The Needle Galaxy was surprisingly easy to find tonight. Although there are no nearby bright stars, I made a triangle using Cor Caroli and Denebola and placed the Telrad that way. That got me close enough that I could recognize asterisms in the finder, and I was on the target, which is visible with 2 s exposures in both the finder and the imager. No wind and seemingly very stable skies tonight, but there is a threat of clouds, especially after midnight. I'm running the chiller at its usual 1.5 A, 6 V setting, which currently gives me a temperature of 4.5 °C. Guiding RMS is about 2 arcsec.

Date: 3 May 2013

Subject: NGC 4565, Needle Galaxy

Scope: AT8IN + HPS Coma Corrector

Filter: None

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

Guiding: 9x50 Finder/Guider + DSI Ic + PHD 1.14.2

Camera: DSI IIc (chiller at ~1.5 A, T = 4 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.5, no dither

Exposure: 16x300 s

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

Processing: StarTools 1.3 Crop; Wipe:Color & Brightness; Develop 96.86%; Contrast; HDR:Reveal core; Sharpen; Deconvolute: 3.0 pix; Track; Color:Bottom 2.0, Top Full, Sat 600%; Life:Moderate. CS6+Astronomy Tools increase star color; layer mask less crunchy more fuzzy; layer mask unsharp mask on dust lanes; make stars smaller; unsharp mask layer mask for dust lanes; AstroFrame.

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NGC 4565, The Needle Galaxy, 3 May 2013, David Dearden