Instrument

12.5" RCOS @ ~ f/9 (2880 mm fl) at 0.64 arcsec/pixel. Shown at  0.99 and 2.21 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

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

Acquisition Data

5/10/2018 to 6/7/2018 Chino Valley, AZ.  with CCD Commander & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

eXcalibrator RGB ratios are 1.00, 1.12 & 1.24

Software & Processing Notes

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, PixInsight, Photoshop CS6.

• eXcalibrator v6.1 for (g:r),(b:r) color balancing, using 82 stars from the Pan-STARRS database.

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

• CCDStack to calibrate the sub exposures.

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

• PhotoShop layers for selectivly adding the enhanced galaxy core data, selective sharpening, color saturation and background noise reduction. 

Comment

The north is to the left.

This contrasting pair of galaxies is located in the constellation Virgo. On the left is the elliptical or lenticular galaxy NGC 5363. Because it still has a visible dust lane, lenticular galaxy is probably the better description. NGC 5363 is at a distance of about 63 million light years.

On the right, is the grand design spiral galaxy NGC 5364. Its distance from Earth is about 67 million light years. There seems to be a debate about its interaction with NGC 5363. Some sources say yes and others say no. One source indicates that the two galaxies are in a very early stage of interaction.

At the upper right, at a distance of about 64 million light years, is NGC 5360.