Captured on Jun 28 and 29, 2014 from Lake Sonoma, CA and Blue Canyon, CA The first night, at Lake Sonoma, it was quite windy, with gusts exceeding 12 mph. Honestly I though the whole night would be a bust, but the AO saved the day (night!) and got me 23 out 26 salvageable frames. If the stars aren't as tight (or round) as can be, it's because of that. On the second night, at Blue Canyon, conditions were much better, but instead to get more luminance I decided to get some color data and finish this off. Unfortunately a software bug caused me to lose the guide star at about 3am, so I could only capture about 4 hours of data (it gets dark pretty late this time of the year!). Description from APOD: From left to right are edge-on spiral NGC 5981, elliptical galaxy NGC 5982, and face-on spiral NGC 5985 -- all within this single telescopic field of view spanning a little more than half the width of the full moon. While the group is far too small to be a galaxy cluster and has not been cataloged compact group, these galaxies all do lie roughly 100 million light-years from planet Earth. On close examination with spectrographs, the bright core of the striking face-on spiral NGC 5985 shows prominent emission in specific wavelengths of light, prompting astronomers to classify it as a Seyfert, a type of active galaxy. This is result of stacking the following sub-exposures: L: 23 x 10m R: 7 x 10m G: 6 x 10m B: 6 x 10m Total exposure time: 7 hours Main Camera: QSI 583 WSG Guide Camera: SXV Lodestar (on OAG) Mount: Astro-Physics Mach 1 Scope: Celestron Edge HD 8" (effective FL: 2170 mm) Adaptive Optics Unit: SXV-AO-LF Image Aquisition software MaximDL Calibrated with MaximDL Registed, Stacked and Post Processed with PixInsight 1.8
Acquired from Sierra Remote Observatories in Northern California in May 2014 Luminance: 19 x 900s R,G,B: 8 x 900s each Total exposure time: ~8.25 hours Main Camera: QSI 883 WSG Guide Camera: SXV Lodestar (on OAG) Mount: Paramount ME Scope: AT 10 RC f/8 Image Aquisition software MaximDL Registed, Calibrated and Stacked and Post Processed with PixInsight 1.8
