Casitas de Gila, Gila, NM
October 17, 2020

Reprocessed 02/21/2023

Original:

During my October 2020 astrophotography trip to Casitas de Gila, Gila, New Mexico, I attempted to image NGC 1365, the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy in the constellation Fornax.  NGC 1365 is really a southern hemisphere target, so it is at a very low altitude.  Not only is there more atmospheric distortion, but there is also a very short time window for imaging.  I could only capture Luminance, Red, Green and Blue filter subframes for one night.  On other nights, the southern horizon was obscured by smoke from the California wildfires.  With limited Luminance data, fine details and faint areas of the arms were not captured.  Also, the color data are very noisy and the many emission nebula in the arms are not present.

Reprocessed:

This was a test on how little data could be used to produce a reasonable image.  NGC 1365 was low in the sky and a minimum amount of data were captured in one night.

I continued my effort to reprocess most of the image data sets that had flaws and issues using new PixInsight tools and an improved workflow.  Again, Russ Croman’s XTerminator tools, and PixInsight’s WBPP, SPCC and GHS process tools made a significant difference in improving the imaging and simplifying the workflow.

Description:

NGC 1365 is one of the best examples of a barred spiral galaxy with a long bar-shaped core and two sweeping spiral arms.  NGC 1365 is about 200,000 light years across and it is 56 million light years from Earth (SkySafari6 Pro).

Imaging details:

Celestron 9.25" Edge HD SCT with 0.7x focal reducer and off-axis guider
Celestron CGEM II mount
ZWO ASI 1600MM Pro cooled monochrome camera (-10C)
36mm ZWO Luminance, Red, Green and Blue filters

Software: Sequence Generator Pro, PHD2 guiding, Celestron CPWI mount control, 
    PixInsight and Photoshop CC 2021/2023

Luminance    2 min x 40 subframes (80 min), Gain 139, Offset 21, 1x1 binning
Red        2 min x 12 subframes (24 min), Gain 139, Offset 21, 1x1 binning
Green    2 min x 12 subframes (24 min), Gain 139, Offset 21, 1x1 binning
Blue       2 min x 12 subframes (24 min), Gain 139, Offset 21, 1x1 binning