SUPERCEDED - NGC 6822 - Barnard's Galaxy in Sagittarius
SUPERCEDED - NGC 6822 - Barnard's Galaxy in Sagittarius
SUPERCEDED - NGC 6822 - Barnard's Galaxy in Sagittarius
NGC 6822 (aka IC 4895) is an irregular dwarf galaxy that is a member of our Local Group of Galaxies. The galaxy contains a mere 10 million stars - a very small number compared to the Milky Way Galaxy's estimated 400 billion stars. E.E. Barnard discovered the galaxy in 1881, earning this galaxy the distinction of being named "Barnard's Galaxy".

In this image, North is Up. This image is cropped to 71% of the original full frame.

Exposure Details
Lens Celestron C-8 SCT with Celestron focal reducer
Focal Length 1260mm
Focal Ratio f/6.3
 
Mount Schaefer GEM - 7 1/2 Byers Gear
Guiding 80mm f/11 guidescope with PHD Guiding
 
Camera Canon 20Da
Exposure 90 subexposures of 300 seconds each at ISO 1600 - 7 1/2 hours total exposure
Calibration 30 darks, 30 flats, 30 bias
 
Date September 19, 20, and 21, 2011
Temperature 62F on 9/19, 63F on 9/20 and 9/21
SQM Reading
Seeing 5 of 5 on 9/19, 4 of 5 on 9/20 and 9/21
Location Pine Mountain Club, California
 
Software Used Images Plus 4.0 for camera control, calibration, and stacking. Images Plus 4.5 for digital development, adaptive Richardson-Lucy deconvolution, multiresolution sharpening, smoothing and noise reduction. Photoshop CS5 used for levels and curves, color correction, selective color, match color, high pass filter, star shrinking, lab color, saturation adjustments, screen mask invert, hdr toning, and smart sharpen. Gradient Xterminator for gradient removal. Carboni Tools for additional saturation adjustments, noise reduction, and smoothing. HLVG for additional color correction.
Notes This is my 4th processing of this galaxy, and I used my DSLR-LLRGB workflow for the processing this time. I'm quite happy with the nice color saturation I was able achieve with this processing, and this processing represents a big improvement over my earlier attempts.

This image won 1st place in Astrophotogallery.org's September 2012 "Hard-Galaxy" category.

If you liked this picture, you might also want to view:

NGC 6822 - Barnard's Galaxy in HaLRGB and the surrounding IFN