Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Draco (Dra)  ·  Contains:  NGC 5976  ·  NGC 5981  ·  NGC 5982  ·  NGC 5985  ·  NGC 5989
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Draco trio, NGC 5976, and NGC 5989, rhedden
Draco trio, NGC 5976, and NGC 5989
Powered byPixInsight

Draco trio, NGC 5976, and NGC 5989

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Draco trio, NGC 5976, and NGC 5989, rhedden
Draco trio, NGC 5976, and NGC 5989
Powered byPixInsight

Draco trio, NGC 5976, and NGC 5989

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

This LRGB image shows the well-known Draco Trio, consisting of NGC 5981, NGC 5982, and NGC 5985.  NGC 5981 is a mag. 13.2, edge-on spiral galaxy with a dust lane, which spans 2.7' x 0.3'.  The middle galaxy, NGC 5982, is an 11th magnitude E3 elliptical galaxy that measures 2.6' x 1.9'.  The fine SBb spiral galaxy NGC 5985 shines at 11th magnitude and spans 5.5' x 3.0' at the right side of the trio.

Two other NGC objects appear in this image.  To the left of the trio is NGC 5976, mag. 14.8, which appears quite small at 0.8' x 0.4'.  In the lower right corner is NGC 5989 at 13th magnitude and 1.0' x 1.0'. 

At the lower left near the orange stars is UGC 9934 at mag. 15.4.  On the lower right edge is UGC 9972, an SBa spiral of mag. 15.6. 

This image is a LRGB composite mostly taken from my Bortle 4/5 backyard.  About two hours of luminance were shot at my Bortle 2 dark site.  The subs were drizzled 2x during stacking to get the image scale down to 0.7" per pixel.   Luminance was shot in Mode 3, gain 14 (300 s); RGB subs were shot in Mode 1, gain 56 (240 s).  I cropped the image down to include the most interesting galaxies in the original field of view, which resulted in the somewhat unusual framing shown here.  

I found the three galaxies in this image to be some of the most drably colored DSOs that I have imaged.  A few other images on Astrobin that were acquired under darker skies show that there is dust lurking around these galaxies, which may explain the attenuated colors and generally brownish tint of the trio.

It look a lot of effort over many nights to acquire the data for this image, as the weather would not cooperate.  In fact, I only managed to get 6.8 hours of data for the entire month of May, which was split between two projects.  To finish this image, I had to stay up late and surgically remove another hour of subs in between clouds, with lightning flickering off in the distance.  It was just that kind of month.  I sure hope the rest of the summer is more cooperative.

Comments