ASTRO: NGC 6744 (large galaxy in Pavo)

Two afternoons of deconvolution in AstroArt were needed to rescue the data
for this large spiral galaxy in the southern constellation of Pavo. There
were severe guiding errors due to guidescope flexure.
If you should ask youself why I was guiding in spite of using an ASA DDM85
mount I should explain that I was the first person to use this mount in 2011
and the pointing model was off by about 30 arcminutes. I did not try to do a
new mapping as that would have meant to use a lot of (to me) unknown
software, probably leaving me with an invalid pointing model and thus an
unusable mount.

NGC 6744 was one of my main targets in Namibia, but the object Rick might
find even more interesting is IC4820 at the top of the image. Looks like a
typical Arp galaxy ;-)

Taken from "Tivoli" farm in Namibia with an ASA 12" astrograph at 1069mm
focal length on an ASA DDM85 mount, Atik 383 L+ camera, 32x5 minutes Lum,
4x5m blue, 5x5m green and 7x5m red

http://ccd-astronomy.de/temp5/6744colourgut.jpg

Stefan

On 7/27/2011 2:51 PM, Stefan Lilge wrote:
Two afternoons of deconvolution in AstroArt were needed to rescue the data
for this large spiral galaxy in the southern constellation of Pavo. There
were severe guiding errors due to guidescope flexure.
If you should ask youself why I was guiding in spite of using an ASA DDM85
mount I should explain that I was the first person to use this mount in 2011
and the pointing model was off by about 30 arcminutes. I did not try to do a
new mapping as that would have meant to use a lot of (to me) unknown
software, probably leaving me with an invalid pointing model and thus an
unusable mount.

NGC 6744 was one of my main targets in Namibia, but the object Rick might
find even more interesting is IC4820 at the top of the image. Looks like a
typical Arp galaxy ;-)

Taken from "Tivoli" farm in Namibia with an ASA 12" astrograph at 1069mm
focal length on an ASA DDM85 mount, Atik 383 L+ camera, 32x5 minutes Lum,
4x5m blue, 5x5m green and 7x5m red

http://ccd-astronomy.de/temp5/6744colourgut.jpg

Stefan



Guide scopes are a pain. In my film days I fought and fought that issue
(manual guiding back then with a 900mm FL refractor to get the needed
image scale). Gave up and had a machinist friend design a off axis
guider for me (they didn't exist back in the early 60's that I knew of
anyway). That solved the issue.

I'd think that they'd have mounts there set up better than that. I've
got this Paramount within seconds of arc of the refracted pole and still
find an 800 point map needed for guiderless tracking. Not sure what
that mount uses for this or how many points are needed. Unless the map
is in error (there are now programs that do the mapping for you that are
highly accurate) they should do the job but at 30 minutes I'd be afraid
of rotation of field.

6744 is almost lost among the stars. That might be one to remove the
stars to a separate layer and process those down leaving the galaxy to
dominate. I've got a few I want to try that with when I reprocess them.

Yes IC4820 does appear interesting. At -63 degrees or so I doubt I'll
give it a try any time soon!

Rick
--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

Is this our milky way galaxy. Looking so beautiful in the picture.

Originally Posted by Stefan Lilge

Two afternoons of deconvolution in AstroArt were needed to rescue the data
for this large spiral galaxy in the southern constellation of Pavo. There
were severe guiding errors due to guidescope flexure.
If you should ask youself why I was guiding in spite of using an ASA DDM85
mount I should explain that I was the first person to use this mount in 2011
and the pointing model was off by about 30 arcminutes. I did not try to do a
new mapping as that would have meant to use a lot of (to me) unknown
software, probably leaving me with an invalid pointing model and thus an
unusable mount.

NGC 6744 was one of my main targets in Namibia, but the object Rick might
find even more interesting is IC4820 at the top of the image. Looks like a
typical Arp galaxy ;-)

Taken from "Tivoli" farm in Namibia with an ASA 12" astrograph at 1069mm
focal length on an ASA DDM85 mount, Atik 383 L+ camera, 32x5 minutes Lum,
4x5m blue, 5x5m green and 7x5m red

http://ccd-astronomy.de/temp5/6744colourgut.jpg

Stefan