M65 and M66 (in just 16 minutes) (Tom Gray)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Leo (Leo) · Contains: Leo Triplet · M 65 · M 66 · NGC 3623 · NGC 3627

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M65 and M66 (in just 16 minutes)

Revision title: What a difference an hour makes

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M65 and M66 (in just 16 minutes)

Revision title: What a difference an hour makes

With galaxy season nearly on us I wanted to try out my new Altair 183c OSC camera. This test shot using 60s exposures totals just 16 minutes of integration. In between seasonal storms, we had a clear, moonless night, although seeing was moderate at best.

M65 and M66 are two bright galaxies in Leo, rising in the wee hours of the morning, with interesting detail and distortions due to the neighbouring NGC 3628 (see next image) which interacts with these (or at least has in the past). Given the poor seeing and short integration, I was surprised to get some detail, with a hint of star clouds in M66 and dust lane in M65.

At f3.3 these are over-sampled at native resolution (and my old laptop can’t cope with the 20Mpx subs); so were collected 2x2 binned and further reduced by 50% in Startools, resulting in more detail and a cleaner image. Flats and darks were applied in Nebulosity.

Clearly longer integration under steady conditions would bring out the colour saturation and more detail, but I’m happy with this, and excited about imaging galaxies at longer focal lengths, as well as short focal lengths, with this camera.

Original
Final
B

B

Title: What a difference an hour makes

Description: This is 84m (120s subs) taken yesterday morning. Amazing what difference an hour makes in image depth, colour saturation and of course noise reduction. Calibration frames have worked well, with no sign of the characteristic 'glow' common with the Sony IMX 183 and good flat frames using ATP FlatsAid tool. The tars are not great, but not bad given the windy conditions. I'm looking forward to imaging these at F10, once the weather settles down.

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Altair Astro 183 M/C Hypercams
UK Astro-Imaging
Low-Cost Astrophotography
Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) Imagers

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5476023
PixInsight job	Y41QKIA1MWBZNKTX4QQ3Q376GQMN7HQS
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	11h19m24s.80
RA (top/left)	11h20m55s.60
RA (top/right)	11h17m49s.31
RA (bottom/right)	11h17m54s.32
RA (bottom/left)	11h21m00s.70

Dec (center)	+13°04′40″.7
Dec (top/left)	+13°20′41″.3
Dec (top/right)	+13°18′48″.6
Dec (bottom/right)	+12°48′33″.2
Dec (bottom/left)	+12°50′27″.7

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M65 and M66 (in just 16 minutes)

Revision title: What a difference an hour makes

M65 and M66 (in just 16 minutes)

Revision title: What a difference an hour makes

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M65 and M66 (in just 16 minutes)

Revision title: What a difference an hour makes

M65 and M66 (in just 16 minutes)

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