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Whale and Hockey Stick Galaxies NGC4631 and NGC4656 - in Canes Venatici

Optics TEC 140APO with Flattener at f7.2
Mount AstroPhysics 900GoTo
Camera STL11000M
Filters Baader LHaRGB
Date February 2013 - March 2014
Location Antares Observatory
SQM-L 20.59mag ± 0.33mag
(18 nights, 82 readings)
Exposure LHaRGB = 30.0-3.0-6.8-7.8-6.3
total: 52.5h
FWHM 3.2 arcseconds
Programs used CCDAutoPilot, MaxIm DL, PixInsight, eXcalibrator, Photoshop CS6
Notes This image is part of the german TBG-Project ("Tief-Belichtete-Galaxien") that aims to find missing satellite galaxies and merger streams around nearby galaxies.

This is - so far - my personal record for accumulating exposure time for a non-mosaic image. My goal here was to get a good image depth to reveal possible faint structures associated with the galaxies. Besides these low surface brightness objects there are also numerous background galaxies (and quasars) at respective distances of up to redshifts of z = 4.5, which corresponds to distances of up to 12 Billion lightyears!

150% resolution images of PGC 42283 with interesting interacting structures, and the whale galaxy, NGC4631, are given below.

PGC42283 NGC4631s

Whale and Hockey Stick Galaxies

click here for a 75% size image, 2990x1990 (3608KB)



The total luminance image (2970 minutes) is shown below. The image to its right is an inverted and contrast stretched version for better visibility of the faint structures. Click on each to find a larger version.

Whale Galaxies luminance Whale Galaxies inverted

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