NGC1232 & NGC1232A Galaxy

[gerry aarts]

NGC1232 & NGC1232A Galaxy by Gerry Aarts
40 x 30 seconds exposures. Celestron GPS11/Wedge in EQ mode at f3.3. Unguided. Meade DSI. Location: Little Dessert Victoria, VicSouth Star Party. 10 Nov 2006. Seeing 8/10. Distance 70 million lightyears. The gravitational swirl of the spiral arms is clearly visible in this image. Where is that "Dark Matter" hiding. Known as an Intermediate Spiral Galaxy this is a fine example. Note the companion galaxy NGC1232A on the far right of the image.

[Tony Leece]

Lovely image Gerry, i haven't seen this pair before. Loads of detail in those spiral arms.:welldone:
Excellent stuff, more please:thumbsupmate:
All the best.......
Tony......

[Radar]

Awesome shot Gerry.

Do you have to manually take each exposure or can you tell the DSI to do 40 x 30 second exposures automatically?

Cheers

Ray

[gerry aarts]

Hi Ray,

The method-option to stack the individual exposures with the Meade DSI...
Save every image (and stack).
or
Save every stacked image above a preset quality you have chosen

By "saving every exposure" You can also re-stack them again later with the Meade or third party software if you want or if you are not happy with the auto stacked image.. If you save every image you can later delete any bad ones, eg cosmic ray hit or jet trails or plain blurry shots etc .

The other great option is that you can set the DSI to reject any image below a certain % quality. Eg. It samples and averages the first 10 exposures then if you set "Image Quality @ 80%" the software will reject all images it deemes are below that level. The software will auto stack all the good images and you can view the results live. Awesome equipment and software for just $500


Regards
Gerry

[hpcoolahan]

Hey there Gerry well done with the images, they're great, i havent had the oportunity to image those yet, will one day.
Sorry to jump in but i thought id send radar to the help videos for the dsi cameras, to answer a few questions for him.heres the link Radar.
http://meade.com/educational/dsi_videos

By the way Gerry ment to ask what camera you have , is it the original color one , or the newer one ??

Clear skies
Patrick

[wakaleo]

Nice pic Gerry. If you look at it for long enough, you can see the spirals move! ;-)

BTW, welcome to the site, and I hope you are keeping your feet dry!

Jim

[gerry aarts]

Hi

Yes I am using the original Meade Color DSI. I normally save in fits format which breaks up the image into raw data, LRGB. Of course the L (Luminence) is not as good or detailed as the DSI pro. The RGB portion of the image does not require as much detail and therefore is not so critical.

I do not have a permanent observatory setup.The one or two nights per month I get up at our club observing site at Linden Observatry in the Blue Mountains 40km distant is limiting.

Tri Color imaging is a lot more time consuming. I have limited opportunity and time. By the time I get the four individual LRGB images I may have got clouded out or run out of time etc. Sydney (Blue Mountains) is not the best location for astronomy weather. So imaging in single shot color will remain my method for some time to come.

I hope to establish a permanent observatory in Mudgee NSW in the future. Say 3 years from now.

For that reason I have chosen to stick with the color version for now. In fact I may acquire a Starlight Express HC9 Color CCD camera in the future. Better quality, Larger chip, more sensitivity and of course a lot more money.

Check out the detail in the attached Helix Nebula image I captured at Siding Springs with DSIc and GPS11 last year. Alatazimuth Mode. No Guiding. The GPS11 tracks beautifully. The Meade DSI de-rotated the image very well. 36 X 30 seconds LRGB images stacked on the fly with the DSI. LRGB fits files liberated and processed in Photoshop.

Regards
Gerry

[Radar]

hi Gerry,

That is an awesome image, especially when we take into account that it is taken in altaz mode.

I'm probably going to get a DSI but the black and white version. I want to do tri colour and hubble palette imaging. This camera looks like quite a good ccd to start off with. I like the rotating software, if only I could use that with film.

Cheers

Ray