Instrument

12.5" RCOS @ ~ f/9 (2880 mm fl) at 0.64 arcsec/pixel. Shown at 0.85 and 1.94 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ FW8 filter wheel & AstroDon Gen-2 LRGB filters.

Acquisition Data

2/1/2017 to 3/30/2017 Chino Valley, AZ.  with CCD Commander & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

eXcalibrator RGB ratios are 1.00, 0.97 & 1.28

Software & Processing Notes

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, PixInsight, Photoshop CS6.

• eXcalibrator v5.0 for (g:r) color balancing, using 38 stars from the SDSS-DR9 database.

• CCDBand-Aid to repair KAI-11000M vertical bars.

• CCDStack to calibrate all sub exposures and create the RGB image.

• PixInsight to register, normalize, data reject, combine the luminance sub exposures, gradient removal, non-linear stretching with HistogramTransformation, galaxy core detail enhancement with HDRMultiscaleTransform and to create the LRGB image.

• PhotoShop for the final touch-up.

Comment

North is to the top.

These two galaxies our designated as Arp 94, in the catalog of peculiar galaxies. NGC 3227 is the larger spiral galaxy and NGC 3226 is the smaller elliptical. The galaxies are located in the constellation Leo, at a distance of about 66 and 73 million light-years respectively.

The multiple looping streams are probably created by several close encounters as the galaxies continue their gravitational dance. Interestingly, there is a faint and nearly straight, tidal stream extending to the south. These galaxies may have already merged, but it will be many million years before we will, if ever, know.