lIC 1823 is a type SBc barred spiral in the constellation Tringulum.  This galaxy is challenging to capture with a small telescope, given its visual magnitude of 13.8 and apparent size of 2.1’ x 2.0’.  Near the right edge of the image is UGC 2156 (PGC 10112), a type Sc spiral galaxy of visual magnitude 14.5.  TheSkyX lists its size as only 1.2’ x 1.1’, but it appears to be closer to 2.4’ x 1.9’ in my image, given its higly extended arms.  This little galaxy still shows a nice pinwheel structure even with my 100 mm refractor.  I believe this is the first dedicated image of IC 1823 and UGC 2156 on Astrobin, so I’m sending it to the “First on Astrobin” group. 

This entire field of view is quite dusty, which adds to the appeal.  I decided to present it with minimal processing manipulations rather than going for the “pretty picture” look.  I used a minimal amount of standard noise reduction and no star shrinking, sharpening, or deconvolution on the luminance channel.  On the RGB layer, I applied a 1-pixel Gaussian blur to reduce chrominance noise just a bit.  Background gradient was removed using the RBF operation in Siril, since I do have a pretty serious LP gradient over my backyard location. 

This image is Part 3 of my “Triangulum Project” with the Esprit 100ED refractor.  Sub-exposures were collected on eight nights between August 25 and Nov 22, 2022 from my Bortle 4+ backyard.  The small refractor captured a fairly wide field of view, such that several interesting galaxy groups were imaged simultaneously.  A large number of subs were acquired with dithering, and 2x drizzle was applied during stacking.  The final image scale of 0.7” per pixel is within reason for imaging most galaxies from my location.

Acquisition details:  Aug 28, Aug 28, Sept 2, Sept 24, Oct 27, Oct 30, Nov 19, and Nov 22, 2022

Total integration time: 20.8125 hours (74,925 s)
Luminance: 11 hours 48.75 min. total;  187x75s (Mode 1, Gain 56, Offset 10) and 95x300s (Mode 3, Gain 14, Offset 10).
RGB: 9 hours 0 min. total; 52x150s (Mode 1, Gain 56, Offset 10) and 41x600s (Mode 3, Gain 14, Offset 10)

1) University of Strasbourg, SIMBAD database.  https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-fid
2) Software Bisque, TheSkyX databases.