Whales and Hocky Sticks

[Whitters]

NGC4656 and NGC4631 otherwise known as the Hocky Stick and The Whale.
Scope William Optics 110mm f6.5
Camera Starlight Xpress MX916
Filter Astronomics IRBlock
Date 24-04-2011 23:04 GMT
Subs 600 seconds
Total integration 25*600 - 4Hours 10minutes
Processing  Sigma stack, DDP, and curves and Levels

Dissapointed as the focus was rather soft

[doug]

Wow, Paul!  That looks like well deep sky stuff.  Whereabouts are they in our polluted skies?   

Doug.

[MarkS]

Paul,

That's a great capture. 

I don't think the processing does it justice, though.  I can't put my finger on the exact cause but the background looks too black and the transition zone from the "whale" and "hockey stick" to the black background looks very pixellated/posterised.

Mark

[Mike]

Yeah somethings not right. Its very noisy for that amount of subs and the stars are rugby ball shaped. Also, as Mark said, it has a pixelated look to it, especially around the edges of the galaxies.

[JohnP]

Paul - that's a potentially very good image although looks like something definitely not right with your processing. I ditto what Mark has said - for that length of exposure & from your dark location I would expect a beautifully smooth, noise free image - looks like something weird has happened with processing.

John

[Whitters]

I will have another go at the processing this time not using the DDP but the focus was very soft, the FWHM was very high on the raw images, much higher than in my previous images with the same setup. I think some of it was my mistake but the seeing was very wobbly that night. This was the main reason for not taking too much time on the processing, but I will have another go.

Doug to answer your question they are in Canes Venatici and they are really quite bright around mag 10.5 with a surface brightness around 14. The only tricky bit was finding a guide star that was bright enough.