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ARP 273, Carl Weber

ARP 273

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
ARP 273, Carl Weber

ARP 273

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

My four month old ASI1600 is having problems so I am without a camera (again). In the meantime, I decided to try and process Hubble Space Telescope images. This is my first attempt at doing so.

The first hurdle to overcome was deciding which files to grab. HST apparently has hundreds of filters in their filter wheels. There are multiple 48 slot wheels holding a variety of filter colors. Add that, there are several filter slots that have their own filter wheels containing 5 more filters. It’s nuts! They are not labeled like our filters (that's too easy apparently) so no SII, Ha, or OIII. For example it's HST_MOS_1014131_wfc3_uvis_f600lp_drz.fits In HST language this means Red.

The raw Fits files were downloaded from the HST Archive and converted into Tiff files. I then processed the set the same way we do our own images in PixInsight and Photoshop.

I am amazed that the public can access and do our own thing to the data. Of course I've seen other images that amateur astronomers have done, but I never thought I could do it too!!

This image to me doesn’t even look real. The thing I really noticed about this image is the depth of scale. Wow, there are galaxies galore everywhere including two really nice face on spirals seen through ARP 273.

6400 sec Red

6400 sec Green

9600 sec Blue

Total exposure time of 3.5 hours

Comments

Histogram

ARP 273, Carl Weber