Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  IC 3476  ·  M 84  ·  M 86  ·  M 88  ·  NGC 4374  ·  NGC 4388  ·  NGC 4402  ·  NGC 4406  ·  NGC 4413  ·  NGC 4425  ·  NGC 4435  ·  NGC 4438  ·  NGC 4459  ·  NGC 4461  ·  NGC 4473  ·  NGC 4474  ·  NGC 4477  ·  NGC 4501  ·  The Eyes
Makarian's Chain and M88, Andrew Klinger
Makarian's Chain and M88
Powered byPixInsight

Makarian's Chain and M88

Makarian's Chain and M88, Andrew Klinger
Makarian's Chain and M88
Powered byPixInsight

Makarian's Chain and M88

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

I'm ending this year's galaxy season with the ultimate existential crisis!

Seen here as the fish hook shape is what is known as "Makarian's Chain", a group of galaxies with an average distance of 50 million light years from Earth. These galaxies are all a part of the Virgo Supercluster, which the Local Group (containing our own Milky Way galaxy) is all a part of. But those aren't the only galaxies in this image. Every fuzzball in this picture that doesn't look like a star is a galaxy, each with 100-400 billion stars, and statistically speaking, many of those stars will have a solar system. As a little bonus, I framed the beautiful spiral galaxy M88 in the lower right corner.

Equipment:

OTA: William Optics GT81 w/0.8x reducer (382mm fl at f/4.7)

Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G (HEQ-5)

Guidescope: Orion 50mm guidescope

Guiding camera: Orion StarShoot Autoguider

Imaging camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool

Software:

SGP

PHD2

CdC

PixInsight

Acquisition:

Location: Atoka, Oklahoma (Bortle 3), and Fort Griffin State Historic Park, Texas (Bortle 3)

Dates: 4/10/2018, 4/14/2018, 4/15/2018, 5/5/2018

Gain: 76 Offset: 15

Camera temp: -20C

L: 167x180"

R: 43x180"

G: 40x180"

B: 50x180"

Total integration time: 15hrs

64x darks per calibration

30x flats per calibration

200x bias (master bias in library)

Preprocessing:

Batch PreProcessing script to generate calibrated images

StarAlignment to register all frames to a reference L

LocalNormalization on RGB frames

ImageIntegration

DrizzleIntegration

DynamicCrop each master

DBE on each master

LinearFit G and R to B

RGB processing:

PhotometricColorCalibration

SCNR green 50%

ArcsinhStretch for a small stretch

HistogramTransformation x2 to finish the stretch

SCNR green 100%

ExponentialTransformation w/ mask to push the galaxies slightly brighter

CurvesTransformation for saturation

ColorSaturation to target blue saturation

L processing:

Deconvolution

HistogramTransformation x2 to stretch image

Duplicated the image to create a starless version, using a starmask and several iterations of MMT and MT. Then pushed the faint nebulosity in the starless version using PixelMath expression: "1-(1-$T)*(1-$T)"

Combined the starless version with the image using PixelMath expression "F=0.4; (1-(1-$T)*(1-s)*F)+($T*~F)" followed by the same expression with F=0.2 (s=starless photo).

HistogramTransformation to move blacks in

LocalHistogramEqualization to improve contrast within galaxies

MultiscaleLinearTransform for slight sharpening

Combined L and RGB with LRGBCombination tool

CurvesTransformation to neutralize background color

ACDNR for slight noise reduction

HistogramTransformation to move black point in

Resampled to 40% for web posting

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Makarian's Chain and M88, Andrew Klinger