Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Lynx (Lyn)  ·  Contains:  NGC 2683
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 2683 UFO Galaxy, Alastairmk
NGC 2683 UFO Galaxy
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 2683 UFO Galaxy

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 2683 UFO Galaxy, Alastairmk
NGC 2683 UFO Galaxy
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 2683 UFO Galaxy

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

NGC 2683 a spiral galaxy in Lynx, with dimensions 9'x2', which we view from Earth at a high inclination. There are also four satellite galaxies in the frame, three of which are indistinguishable from stars and one is a tiny edge on spiral perpendicular to the upper left of the main target.

This was imaged over 10 night during the period February 20 to March 15, 2022 from my backyard observatory close to Washington DC in an area of high light pollution. Because of periods of low transparency due to passing high altitude clouds and some very poor seeing, I rejected more than a quarter of the 528 lights subframes in order to capture as much detail as my equipment and observing conditions allowed. These conditions also made autofocusing a SCT a challenge.  As an afterthought, I captured 1.5h of Ha data. Even though NGC 2683 is not noted for Ha star forming area, I was able to capture a few, including at the bottom right of the galaxy.

Total exposure selected for the final image:
L 143 x 120s
R  99 x 180s
G  56 x 180s
B  89 x 180s
Ha 11x 480s
Image scale is 0.46 arc/pixel. Original field of view of 37 x 28 arcmin cropped to about 21 x 16 arcmin.

Fairly conventional linear processing in Pixinsight: Blink, calibration with WBPP, SubframeSelector, WBPP (new version with PSF weighting and gradient normalisation) for registration and integration, MureDenoise, DynamicCrop, DynamicBackgroundEqualization, Deconvolution (masked)
Each channel was stretched separately. RGB combination, BackgroundNeutralization,  PhotometricColorCalibration, MLT (masked for sharpening), Ha data added using PixelMath. Similarly processed L channel added to RGBHa master. LRGBHa master demonised using TGVDenoise (masked) and MMT (masked).  Final adjustments using CurvesTransform and to adjust colour saturation, plus MorphologicalTransform to de-emphasize stars.  Final denies using Topaz Denoise AI with a last tweak with SCNR in Pixinsight to remove some green in the galactic halo.

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

NGC 2683 UFO Galaxy, Alastairmk

In these public groups

NOVAC