Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) 0.64 arcsec / pixel.  Zoomify image scale is 0.64 to 2.56 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

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

Acquisition Data

4/7/2010 to 5/7/2010 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.

Exposure

Lum    345 min (23 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

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

Software

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

• eXcalibrator for (u-g), (g-r) color calibration, using 8 stars from the SDSS database.

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

• CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject, combine the sub exposures, LRGB color, and luminance deconvolution.

• PhotoShop for LLRGB combine &  on-linear stretching.

North is to the top.

This interesting foursome, ARP 297, is located in the constellation Bootes. The bottom two galaxies are NGC 5754, on the left, and NGC 5752. Gravitational interaction, between these two galaxies, has produced a long tidal tail extending from NGC 5752. The red shift for NGC5754 is 0.0152 and the value for NGC 5752 is 0.0151, putting the two galaxies at a distance of about 215 million light-years.

Moving up, we find NGC 5755 with NGC 5753 above and to the right. These two galaxies are in the background, at a distance of about 455 million light-years.