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Click the image for a larger uncropped view.
(2400 x 1600 1.30 MB)
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Instrument |
12.5" RCOS @ ~f/9
(2880 mm fl) 0.64 arcsec / pixel. The Zoomify image scale is
0.64 to 3.59 arcsec / pixel. |
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Mount |
Paramount ME |
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Camera |
SBIG STL-11000 w/
FW8-STL filter wheel, AstroDon Gen II Filters. |
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Acquisition Data |
5/29/2013 to 6/11/2013 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot5
& CCDSoft. AOL guided. |
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Exposure |
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Lum |
780
min. (23 x 30 min. bin 1x1) |
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RGB |
540 min. ( 6 x
30 min. each bin 1x1) |
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Software |
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CCDSoft, CCDStack,
Photoshop CS6, PixInsight and Noel Carboni's actions.
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eXcalibrator v4.1 for
(g-r) color balancing, using 54 stars from the SDSS-DR9
database.
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CCDBand-Aid
to repair STL-11000M vertical bars.
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CCDStack to calibrate, register,
normalize, data reject, combine the sub exposures, create the RGB
image and selective luminance Maximum Entropy deconvolution.
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PixInsight for gradient removal and
initial non-linear stretching.
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PhotoShop for the LRGB combine & final
touch-up.
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Noiseware 5, a PhotoShop plug-in.
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Comment |
The galaxies are shown rotated
135° clockwise.
This beautiful group
of galaxies is located in the constellation Virgo. The largest
galaxy is NGC 5566 and is about 78 million light years distant. To
the right is NGC 5569 at a distance of 92 million light-years. This
galaxy shows no interaction with the other two. At the bottom, and
90 million light-years away, is NGC 5560. NGC 5566 and 5560 are an
interacting pair. The nearly edge on view of NGC 5560 shows
distortion. On the left end of NGC 5566, we can see a faint plume
extending towards the lower galaxy.
The image contains
eight distinctly blue quasars with redshifts from 0.80 to 2.14.
There are also two QSO candidates.
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