The Great Barred Spiral in Fornax (Niall MacNeill)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Fornax (For) · Contains: NGC 1365

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The Great Barred Spiral in Fornax

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The Great Barred Spiral in Fornax

I previously posted a wide field/ 2 panel image with NGC 1365, the Great Spiral Galaxy in Fornax. I completely redid the processing on the panel that includes NGC 1365, then reoriented it and cropped it.

A few points worth noting:
- previously when I did the continuum subtraction for this and other galaxies, I have ended up with the core of the galaxy being quite bright in Ha. That made for a pink central core of the galaxy. I got around this by making a mask and removing the central brightness to leave the knots of Ha red/ pink in the spiral arms. However, I never felt particularly comfortable with that, since the Ha is clearly there. This time I did not do that. I simply greatly reduced the intensity of the Ha red/ pink colourisation through the continuum mapping process. This left the core with a subtle pink/ red hue, that in combination with the yellow of the core, which when enhanced gave a satisfying red/ orange touch to the yellowness of the core, looking quite natural to my eye. The Ha in the spiral arms is thus much more subtle and arguably less garish than before. I prefer the look.
- I feel the appearance is much better than before, where the absence of red at the core made for a golden, almost green, hue. Previously there was always a slightly purple look to the spiral arms, which bothered me and now it is a much more natural blue
- I went for an aspect ratio of 8:12.
- the size of the galaxy is now large enough to fully appreciate the fine detail, yet it is still set in an interesting sea of galaxies, to give the image interest and context. I think the galaxy being offset from the centre aids with the composition and balance in the image.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7778865
PixInsight job	KNN0282S360AD747JN60QND5Q4OUJLJZ
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	03h33m37s.162
RA (top/left)	03h32m35s.905
RA (top/right)	03h32m37s.190
RA (bottom/right)	03h34m39s.720
RA (bottom/left)	03h34m36s.901

Dec (center)	-36°03′57″.00
Dec (top/left)	-35°45′38″.90
Dec (top/right)	-36°22′26″.76
Dec (bottom/right)	-36°22′12″.42
Dec (bottom/left)	-35°45′22″.99

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The Great Barred Spiral in Fornax

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