Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2897 mm fl) 0.64 arcsec / pixel.  The Zoomify image scale is 0.64 to 3.42 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

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

Acquisition Data

4/5/2011 to 5/7/2011 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

Lum 510 min (34 x 15 min, bin 1x1 (best of 56)

RGB 675 min (15 x 15 min each, bin 2x2)

Software & Processing

CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS3, Noel Carboni's actions and Russell Croman's GradientXTerminator.

eXcalibrator for (u-g), (g-r) color calibration, using 11 stars from the SDSS-DR7 database.

PixFix32 (pre-beta) to repair column defects.

CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject,  combine the sub exposures, Selective deconvolution and RGB combine.

PhotoShop for non-linear stretching and LRGB combine.

Noiseware Pro, a PhotoShop plug-in.

North is to the top.

This beautiful trio of galaxies is located in the constellation Draco. From left to right are face-on spiral NGC 5985, elliptical galaxy NGC 5982, and edge-on spiral NGC 5981. Their respective distances are about 114, 137 and 80 million light-years.