Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) at 0.64 arcsec/pixel. Shown at 1.28 and 3.03 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ FW8 filter wheel, AstroDon Gen-2 Filters

Acquisition Data

3/21/2014 to 6/19/2014 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCD Commander & CCDSoft.

Exposure

Lum  1050 min. (35 x 30 min. bin 1x1)

RGB   720 min. ( 16 x 15 min. bin 2x2, each)

Software & Processing Notes

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS6, PixInsight and Noel Carboni's actions.

• No SDSS stars were available for color balancing, so a standard image-train color calibration was used, as determined by eXcalibrator v4.25, and then adjusted for altitude extinction.

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

• CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject, combine the sub exposures, create the RGB image.

• PixInsight for gradient removal, initial non-linear stretching and selective use of HDRMultiscaleTrans to enhance the detail in the center of the galaxies.

• PhotoShop for the LRGB combine & final touch-up.

• Noiseware 5, a PhotoShop plug-in.

Comment

The field of view is rotated 35 degrees counter-clockwise

This group of galaxies is located in the constellation Camelopardalis. At the top, is the spiral galaxy NGC 2633, at a distance of 98 million light years. Below is the shell galaxy NGC 2634 and nearby 2634A. NGC 2634 is at a distance of about 103 million light-years and NGC 2634A is at 95 million.The shells around NGC 2634 are very recent discovery in 2000.

Although these three galaxies are at similar distances and in the same general direction, they are not interacting with each other.

Also shown in the image are two interesting dust lanes of the integrated flux nebula.