SUPERCEDED-NEWER VERSION AVAILABLE---NGC 772 - A Peculiar Galaxy in Aries (2011 Version)
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NGC 772 is a fascinating galaxy that is also known as Arp 78. Because it is very close to and gravitationally interacting with NGC 770 (the elliptical galaxy immediately below NGC 772), the spiral arms and shape of NGC 772 are distorted. Additonally, this field has a great many smaller galaxies. In the original TIFF image, I can identify 15 objects which are obviously galaxies and many dozens of faint galaxies scattered throught the image. As an example, close inspection of this photo will reveal a collection of about 13 very small galaxies just above the main galaxy (they look like small spots above NGC 772).
In this image, North is Up. This image is cropped to 58% of the original full frame.
Exposure Details |
Lens |
Celestron C-8 SCT with Celestron focal reducer |
Focal Length |
1260mm |
Focal Ratio |
f/6.3 |
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Mount |
Schaefer GEM - 7 1/2 |
Guiding |
80mm f/11 guidescope with PHD Guiding |
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Camera |
Canon 20Da |
Exposure |
170 subexposures of 180 seconds at ISO 1600 - 8 1/2 hours of total exposure |
Calibration |
30 darks, 30 flats, 30 bias |
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Date |
October 22, 23, and 24, 2011 |
Temperature |
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SQM Reading |
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Seeing |
4 of 5 on 10/22 and 10/23, 3 of 5 on 10/24 |
Location |
Pine Mountain Club, California |
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Software Used |
Images Plus 4.0 for camera control, calibration, stacking and digital development. Photoshop CS5 used for flat fielding, curves, color correction, saturation adjustments, star shrinking, noise reduction, and high pass filter. HLVG for additional color correction, Carboni Actions for additional saturation adjustments. |
Notes |
This image was a lot of fun to process, as trying to bring out the faint galaxies and the extended regions of the galaxy was a bit challenging. This is an object that is not commonly photographed, so I'm pleased that my image came out as well as it did. |
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