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M86 et al., The Virgo Cluster, 14 May 2013, David Dearden
M86 et al., The Virgo Cluster, 14 May 2013
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M86 et al., The Virgo Cluster, 14 May 2013

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Description

The Virgo Cluster is easy to find, although the galaxies themselves are not bright enough to easily spot in the imager except at about 5 s exposures or more (the bright cores are easily visible, but look like stars except at longer times). As usual, once I got my camera oriented I was able to recognize some asterisms and find my way around. Conditions tonight are poor: frequent clouds, blustery wind. I doubt this session will produce anything useful. I'm trying 480 s subframes just because at this imaging scale I can. A truly amazing number of galaxies are visible in the field of view. I’m trying to figure out why this image turned out so poorly (it is extremely noisy!), especially compared to last year’s effort (usually I see progress over last year); I want to blame it on poor conditions, and that might be right. Also, I used the UHC-S filter this time, and maybe that sacrificed too much light; I know it is not the optimum filter for galaxies like these and probably should go back to the Fringe Killer next time I try.

Date: 14 May 2013

Subject: Heart of the Virgo Cluster

Scope: Orion ST80

Filter: Baader UHC-S

Mount: CG-5 (Synta motors)

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

Camera: DSI IIc (cooled at 1.5 A, 7.0 V, 14.5 °C)

Acquisition: Nebulosity 3.1.5

Exposure: 20 x 480 s

Stacking: Neb 3, bad pixel map, bias included, normalize first, trans+rot align, 1.25 SD stack.

Processing: StarTools 1.3 Crop; Wipe:Color & Brightness; Develop 90.86%; Contrast; HDR:Equalize; Sharpen; Track; Color:Bottom 2.0, Top Full, Sat 500%; Denoise (twice); Life:Moderate. CS6+Astronomy Tools increase star color; layer mask deep space NR, space NR; AstroFrame.

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M86 et al., The Virgo Cluster, 14 May 2013, David Dearden