Instrument

12.5" RCOS @ ~ f/9 (2880 mm fl) at 0.64 arcsec/pixel. Shown at 0.86 and 1.28 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

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

Acquisition Data

6/19/2015 to 7/20/2015 Chino Valley, AZ.  with CCD Commander & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

eXcalibrator RGB ratios are 1.00, 0.98 & 1.14

Software & Processing Notes

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, PixInsight, Photoshop CS6.

• eXcalibrator v4.36 for (g:r) color balancing, using 104 stars from the SDSS-DR7 database.

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

• CCDStack to calibrate all sub exposures and create the RGB image.

• PixInsight to register, normalize, data reject, combine the luminance sub exposures, gradient removal, non-linear stretching with HistogramTransformation, detail enhancement with HDRMultiscaleTransform and to create the LRGB image.

• PhotoShop for the final touch-up.

• Noiseware 5, a PhotoShop plug-in.

Comment

The galaxy is shown rotated 135° clockwise.

NGC 6217 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Minor at a distance of about 60 million light-years.

At the top right edge of the image is the interesting interacting galaxy UGC 10509. This galaxy is about 70 million light years from Earth.