Galaxies

By all measures this should have been a good galaxy season imaging night; clear, light winds, average transparency and seeing and not too cold at Harvard, MA. Setup and polar alignment went well. The auto-guider was working great. Everything was ready by 8:50 PM in time for my three hour imaging session. Of the 14 galaxies on my target list I managed to image eight by midnight. I considered going past midnight but my chilled fingers and toes said no. That yield was acceptable. Unfortunately I was off my mental game. In several cases I used the wrong exposure dark frame during sub frame acquisition. An inordinate amount of image processing with Paintshop Pro 2021 was necessary to produce the images below. If given another good galaxy season clear night I'll try to finish aforementioned target list while adding a few more. Equipment used: Celestron 8 with AVX mount, Starizona Night Owl 0.4X focal reducer corrector, ZWO ASI294MC Pro camera.

NGC2403

NGC2841

NGC2903

Messier 65 (top) and Messier 66

Messier 85 (bottom) and NGC4394

Messier 95

Messier 96

Clockwise from top Messier 105,NGC3389, NGC3384

Into Spring

Spring has arrived, so I've decided to get a jump on galaxy season. One non-galaxy target, overlooked by me in the past, is the gaseous nebula NGC2174. It was during an earlier open cluster imaging night that I noticed its nebulosity while imaging its associated open cluster NGC2175. Imaging wasn't under the best conditions, the heavily light polluted count of Frederick, MD, so I'll likely revisit NGC2174 in the future. It appears below along with five galaxies. All imaging was done at F/4 with a Starizona Night Owl focal reducer/corrector. Am, I glad I acquired this accessory before the SARS Covid-2 pandemic as it's been out of stock for months.  NGC2174 and NGC2175 were averaged from 60s sub frames. The galaxies were averaged  from 120s sub frames.

NGC2174 (gaseous nebula) and NGC2175 (open cluster)

M94 (galaxy)

M106 (galaxy)

M109 (galaxy)

NGC2403 (galaxy)

NGC2841(galaxy)

Windows Live(TM) Gallery

April - May mid Atlantic clouds have been frustrating leaving me time to retrospectively play with past images. I often quick view images with Windows Live Gallery. What I had not noticed or played with until recently was the Fix function. Fix is a basic image processing app that lets you make quick adjustments brightness, contrast, color, tint, and saturation. Other functions are sharpening and noise reduction. I still do initial processing of the averaged image using Corel Paintshop Pro X9 . These five galaxies were touched up with the Windows Live(tm) Gallery Fix after initial processing with Paintshop Pro X9. Unfortunately galaxy season, when the Virgo and Coma galaxy clusters are prominent around 10 PM is passing fast. Fingers are crossed the last week of May when the moon is waning will bring some clear skies.

M101

M106

M94

M81

NGC2403