Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) at 0.64 arcsec / pixel.  Zoomify image scale is 0.85 to 3.42 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ internal filter wheel, AstroDon Gen-1 Filters

Acquisition Data

1/12/2010 to 3/15/2010 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.

Exposure

Lum  585 min. (39 x 15 min. bin 1x1)

RGB  270 min. (  6 x 15 min. bin 2x2, each)

Software & Processing Notes

CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS w/ the Fits Liberator plugin, Noel Carboni's actions and Russell Croman's GradientXTerminator.

PixFix32 (pre-beta) to repair hot/cold pixels and column defects.

eXcalibrator for (u-g), (g-r) color calibration, using 3 stars from the SDSS database.

CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject, combine sub exposures & color combine for the LRGB.

PhotoShop CS3 for non-linear stretching and LLRGB combine

Comment

North is to the top.

NGC 3190, 3193, 3185 and 3187 are the four dominant members of the Hickson Compact Group 44. Many galaxies in Hickson 44, and other compact groups, are either slowly merging or gravitationally pulling each other apart. In particular, NGC 3190 and 3187 show signs of gravitational interaction. NGC 3190 shows of warping in its dust lane and NGC 3187 has developed tidal tails.