NGC 3079 and friends (Roger Menard)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: NGC 3073 · NGC 3079

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NGC 3079 and friends

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NGC 3079 and friends

Based on my previous tests of binning, I decided to use 2x2 binning with ZWO ASI2600 OSC attached to 11 inch SCT. I also used Falcon Rotator vice manual rotator since it is more accurate and easier to use. The image train included a focal reducer, T-Adapter (I need to 48mm version for this setup), Falcon rotator, and 48mm-42mm converter. This resulted in proper backfocus distance.I set the ZWO ASI2600 for -10C, gain 100 and 2x2 binning. That allowed me to use shorter exposures (1 minute). I took 280 images of 1 minute and 50 flats 0.15 seconds (also binned 2x2). I processed with PixInsight. During image processing I found NGC 3079 has company including NGC 3073, MCG+09-17-009 galaxy and the twin quasars Q0957+561A and B. NGC 3079 is a barred spiral galaxy about 50 million light years away. It has a prominent bubble in its center. NGC 3073 is a dwarf lenticular galaxy about 65 million light years away. It is part of the NGC 3079 galaxy group. There is also a quasar Q0957+561A and B that appear as dim stars. It is actually a single quasar that appears as two images due to gravitational lensing. The lensing actually causes a time lag of about 417 days between the two images. The quasar is 8.7 billion light years away.

The MCG galaxy is to the right of NGC 3079. The quasar are two dots close to each other in upper right section of image basically in line with NGC 3079. I have another image that annotates the objects but I am not sure how to include the image.

PixInsight Addicts
IOptron CEM
ZWO ASI 2600MC PRO

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5780814
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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