At the end of January I managed a short 1 hour integration of this
galaxy at f3 with my new CMOS hypercam. Previous attempts at longer focal lengths have been thwarted by a lack of integration, patience and sensitivity of my old mono CCD camera.
Collected over two nights, this image comprises 4 hours data as 300s exposures on the first night, when the seeing was better, and 180s subs last night where there was a definite haze. I used a framing mask in APT to align the images, albeit there was some rotation, which I was able to correct using Nebulosity to calibrate, align, and stack. Processing was fairly straightforward, apart from quite a lot of walking noise, I probably should have dithered after every 5m exposure.
The image is still a bit noisy, and lacks the fine detail and structure visible under excellent seeing, but I was pleased to get some depth in the dust, and the saturated core, giving way to a lighter yellow halo. I was sorry not to see more of the blue star clouds that adorn the ends of the galaxy, it was hard to differentiate between walking noise and detail.
NGC 3628 lies 35m LY away and is thought to span 100,000 LY.
Comments