NGC4151, 4145 and many small galaxies in Canes Venatici - wide field

[Roberto]

Hello All

Whilst the weather held and the Moon was down I managed to finish this shot of NGC4151 and some companions in Canes Venatici. Some people call NGC4151 The Eye of Sauron and I have posted a link to a proper image of this object in my Astrobin page for those interested.

Details of the shot here:  https://www.astrobin.com/y3unj0/D/

This was taken through my usual tandem setup, 16hrs in total:  9hrs of L and 7hrs of RGB/OSC.

NGC4151, a mere 52 million ly away, is a prime exponent of a Seyfert galaxy with a massive black hole at its centre.  Hubble looked at it back in 1997:  https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/1997/news-1997-18.html

Roberto



See the annotated image here for the numerous PGC galaxies peppering the background:

[Carole]

I have already liked this on Astrobin Roberto. 

Carole

[garrick]

Nice 👌

Clear Skies

GW

[RobertM]

Lovely processing as usual and a great image.  I really like the way you process the background, it seems to bring out the best in the details.

Robert

[Roberto]

Thank you All.

Robert, the background may actually be "too flat" because I had to construct a synthetic flat and apply it after calibration. There were high clouds and the usual London LP combined for quite a few of the shot and the masters to end with heavy gradients.

Roberto

[garrick]

Nice round stars that are not saturated at 300' and 600' (had a look at your Astrobin data). Brilliant. Have you tried the normalize scale gradient script on PI to deal with the gradients. Seems to be working well.

CS

G

[Roberto]

Hi Garrick

Thank you.  Yes, I've been using NSG since it launched in 2020.  John Murphy is a top guy.  This routine before integrating the masters is a must for light polluted skies like ours.

Roberto