ASTRO: Arp 288/ NGC 5221/5222/5230

We had an almost unreal interval of good weather last new moon, don't
remember if it were six or seven clear nights with only one cloudy night in
between.
Unfortunately I was too lazy to join some astro chaps from Berlin on a trip
to better skies, but at least I got a lot of exposure time from Berlin.
Transparency was mostly good, but it was quite windy at times. My (rather)
new AZ-EQ6 mount coped quite well with this. The AZ-EQ won't replace the G11
as the G11 (tuned with an Ovision worm) still tracks better, but the AZ-EQ6
is much easier to handle and much more fun, my G11 doesn't even have Goto.

My main target was Arp 288 (NGC 5221/5222) with the added bonus of NGC 5230.
All three are about 300 million light years away according to Guide9, so
they seem to belong to a physical group of galaxies. As the tidal tail of
NGC 5221 is very faint in my image I have also included an inverted version.

Taken from Berlin with a 10" Meade ACF at f/8, AZ-EQ6 mount, Trius SX694
camera, 41x7.5min Lum, 19x7.5min RGB each.

Stefan

You went surprisingly deep from your location though all that time had to have helped a lot.

Your negative image does show the northwestern plume much better. For some reason I've never been able to make a negative image that went any deeper than the positive. Yet most others do. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Rick

Originally Posted by Stefan Lilge

We had an almost unreal interval of good weather last new moon, don't
remember if it were six or seven clear nights with only one cloudy night in
between.
Unfortunately I was too lazy to join some astro chaps from Berlin on a trip
to better skies, but at least I got a lot of exposure time from Berlin.
Transparency was mostly good, but it was quite windy at times. My (rather)
new AZ-EQ6 mount coped quite well with this. The AZ-EQ won't replace the G11
as the G11 (tuned with an Ovision worm) still tracks better, but the AZ-EQ6
is much easier to handle and much more fun, my G11 doesn't even have Goto.

My main target was Arp 288 (NGC 5221/5222) with the added bonus of NGC 5230.
All three are about 300 million light years away according to Guide9, so
they seem to belong to a physical group of galaxies. As the tidal tail of
NGC 5221 is very faint in my image I have also included an inverted version.

Taken from Berlin with a 10" Meade ACF at f/8, AZ-EQ6 mount, Trius SX694
camera, 41x7.5min Lum, 19x7.5min RGB each.

Stefan