Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) 0.643 arcsec / pixel.  Shown resampled to 0.86 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ internal filter wheel, AstroDon G1 Filters

Acquisition Data

4/29/2009 to 5/25/2009  Chino Valley, AZ

Exposure

Lum    360 min (24 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

RGB    270 min (  6 x 15 min each, bin 1x1)

Software

CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS w/ the Fits Liberator plugin, Noel Carboni's actions and Russ Croman's Gradient Exterminator

CCDStack to register, normalize, data reject & combine sub frames.

PhotoShop for the color combine, non-linear stretching and sharpening.

Comment

North is to the top.

These two galaxies, known collectively as Arp 271, are about 90 million light years away, in the constellation of Virgo. Between the two galaxies, a bridge of exchanging material can be seen. Also, some of the many HII regions, in both galaxies, are visible. This is probably a good representation of the future collision of our Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy. It is unlikely that mankind will be affected by this collision... five million years from now.