NGC 4945: Another Pummeled Galaxy? (Alex Woronow)

NGC 4945: Another Pummeled Galaxy?

NGC 4945: Another Pummeled Galaxy?

OTA: CDK 24 (Heaven's Mirror)
Camera: Morovian 61000 Pro

R: 14 x 900s
G: 21 x 900
B: 18 x 900
Ha: 12 x 900

Total exposure: 15.25hrs
Image Width: 28.75 arc-minutes

Image basics: 2x2 binning at capture and down-sample another 2x after processing. In the posted image, viewed at its full resolution, a single pixel spans 1.7x10^14 km on NGC 4945. The finest features visible are a few times this and cannot be called "fine detail" in the ordinary meaning of "fine"!

As for the target, NGC 4945 is classified as Spiral Type B (barred) galaxy, which we see almost edge-on. Wikipedia says, "X-ray observations show that NGC 4945 has an unusual energetic Seyfert 2 nucleus that might house a supermassive black hole. Around the galaxy's nucleus is a dense disk of dust and gas, along with many dense star clusters." Search as I might through images of this galaxy (professional and otherwise); the bars appear ill-defined, at best. The tumultuous clouds and star-birth activity throughout the disk and nucleus dominate this view, perhaps caused by a gravitational encounter with another galaxy?

The color calibration of the image yields this orangish red galaxy. Although suppressed in this processing, an intervening cloud pervades the entire image, imparting that "red sunset" tint to the galaxy and many stars in the field. Note the unusual scarcity of blue stars. Also, being a Seyfert galaxy (= high surface brightness), applying image detail-enhancing contrast was difficult because boosting contrast quickly erased the fainter outer extents of the galaxy. The byproduct of the balance of brightness detail and faint structures, while suppressing the surrounding cloud (without masking), resulted in this rather in-your-face galaxy…but given the challenges, I'll take it!

Hope you enjoy this rendering of a tricky-to-process target,

Alex Woronow

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7677674
PixInsight job	161CW54NSD9ARLMGLD8KXZSK5HRX2OCC
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h05m26s.593
RA (top/left)	13h03m45s.991
RA (top/right)	13h05m42s.221
RA (bottom/right)	13h07m06s.756
RA (bottom/left)	13h05m10s.852

Dec (center)	-49°28′40″.62
Dec (top/left)	-49°33′29″.52
Dec (top/right)	-49°11′50″.40
Dec (bottom/right)	-49°23′47″.10
Dec (bottom/left)	-49°45′31″.70

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