NGC 5033, Holmberg VIII, and NGC 5014

Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
Sometimes one's astrophotography composition is controlled by the camera rotation, and in my case of operating remotely, that is often the case. On this image my main target was NGC 5033, the large irregular spiral in the lower left of the frame. I also wanted to get NGC 5005 in the frame, but my orientation was not optimal and I was not ready to set up for a 4 x 4 mosaic to make that happen. By sliding NGC 5033 to the corner of the frame I was able to include a couple of other objects though. The bluish patch in the lower right is irregular galaxy Holmberg VIII (also designated as UGC 8303) and the small galaxy in the upper right is NGC 5014, which has a barely detectable dusat lane that bisects the galaxy vertically instead of horizontally.

This is an image made in RGB with luminance data added in. I also took some Hα data but it did not seem to amount to much so I did not try to add it in. Total integration time was 9 hours and 55 mins. Shorter frames were taken for the star data and added back in at the end of the processing of the galaxies.

Image and collection details follow. Comments and critiques welcome.

LRCC_sRGB_Rot_FW_sRGB_NGC5033_LRGB_BN_IS_PCC_SXT_MS-1000_NXT3_SCNR_ArcS-268-_1035_CT2_LHE_HT_P...jpg


Equipment:
ZWO ASI1600MM-C Camera @ -10C and Gain:139 Offset:21
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Celestron EdgeHD 9.25 SCT with 0.7x reducer, 1645mm @ f/7

Software:
PHD2 Guiding Software
NINA Astroimaging Software
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Software Bisque TheSkyX
Lightroom CC
Photoshop CC
Russell Croman BlurXterminator
Russell Croman StarXterminator
Russell Croman NoiseXterminator

Light Frames:
Red: 57 x 180 secs (2 hrs 51 mins)
Red: 57 x 30 secs (28 mins 30 secs)
Green: 57x 180 secs (2 hrs 51 mins)
Green: 57 x 30secs (28 mins 30 secs)
Blue: 56 x 180 secs (2 hrs 48 mins)
Blue: 56 x 30 secs (28 mins)

9 hrs 55 mins total

Dark Frames:
10 x 180 secs, RGB (30 mins)
10 x 30 secs, RGB (5 mins)

Bias Frames:
60

Flat Frames:
10 each filter
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
That's a beautiful spiral. The orientation of the camera is extremely important. This works out, though I think I would have preferred not having NGC 5033 down in thr corner. It's not cut off, but feels like it, and visually I think it's really hard to look for me then a glance in a corner, just like any type of photo.
 
Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
JimFox said:
That's a beautiful spiral. The orientation of the camera is extremely important. This works out, though I think I would have preferred not having NGC 5033 down in thr corner. It's not cut off, but feels like it, and visually I think it's really hard to look for me then a glance in a corner, just like any type of photo.
Click to expand...

Jim,

Yes this was not optimal but this was the orientation I had, and I wanted something else in the frame. I suppose the very small NGC 5014 could have been sacrificed to at least bring the other 2 objects up to midline level. Or as mentioned already, I could have done a mosaic. The bigger bummer is that a bigger companion object is very close, NGC 5005, but there was no way to get to that one with NGC 5033 in the frame, would have again required a mosaic.

Once I am equipped to use my rotator I will have one more degree of freedom for this, Initially I was thinking to use it only on the refractor setup but perhaps it could be configured to swap over to this setup as well without too much work... In any case, I agree with your comment, was a bit aware of the issue at the time, but decided to go ahead with it. It certainly is a compromise.
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
You have incredible resolution with that new camera, so you can crop and not lose any detail at all. If you want to bring back the resolution. Then use the High Resolution mode in ACR, which doubles the resolution at no loss of detail, or minimal at worst, and then crop it. You could gain another 1500mm of appearance of scope. I am now doing that on mine, and it allows me to get at least some decent resolution and details even though I am limited to 500mm. That way you could have centered NGC 5033 and doubled it's size with no loss of detail.
 
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