Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) Shown at 0.85 and 2.24 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ FW8-STL filter wheel, AstroDon Gen II LRGB Filters.

Acquisition Data

6/12/2015 to 6/17/2015 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCD Commander & CCDSoft.  AOL guided.

Exposure

RGB ratios are 1.00, 0.87 & 1.20

Software

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS6, PixInsight and Noel Carboni's actions.

• eXcalibrator v4.36 for (g:r) color balancing, using 131 stars from the SDSS-DR9 database.

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

• CCDStack to calibrate all sub exposures, register and stack the color and create the RGB image.

• PixInsight processing includes registering and stacking the luminance, gradient repair, non-linear stretching with HistogramTransformation, LRGB creation and HDRMultiscaleTransform.

• PhotoShop for the final touch-up. 

• Noiseware 5, a PhotoShop plug-in.

The field of view is shown rotated 25° clockwise.

This interesting group of galaxies is in the constellation Draco. Near the bottom, at a distance of about 52 million light-years, is the lenticular galaxy NGC 6340. It is most likely formed by the collision of two, possibly a spiral and an elliptical, galaxies. Partially visible in this image, is a faint dust lane that extends through the core.

To the upper-right is the blue galaxy IC 1251 at a distance of about 52 million light–years.

At the upper left is the barred spiral IC 1254, at a distance of about 55 million light–years. The galaxy has a large faint plume, indicating an interaction with another galaxy.

To the far upper-left is UGC 10791 at a distance of about 57 million light-years.