Observation Log - March 27, 2001 - Tinton Falls, NJ

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[NOTE: Temperature at dawn was 23F, and the breeze was up to 10 mph or a little more. The setup on the 12" Meade LX200 was the Crayford focuser/f3.3 reducer/1.25" visual back/ MX516 camera, and no IR blocking filter. I did several sets of darks and twilight flats at dusk. -GW]

NGC2903, a spiral galaxy in Leo, magnitude 9.0, dimensions 13'.3 x 6'.0, surface brightness is 12.3 mag/sq arcmin, and a distance of 20 million light years. The frames were shot between 8:40 and 10:06 p.m. the evening of March 26. This composite was made from the best 50 exposures of 72 taken, for a total integration time of 50 minutes. All images were processed in AstroArt with darks, flats and flat-darks, then aligned and composited. Then I moved the image into MaxIm, and did a Digital Development filter (FFT, low-pass, hard) and an unsharp mask (FFT, low-pass, mild.) The image was finished with a contrast stretch. Here's another version that has been stretched more to show the outer extent of the spiral arms. And here is yet another version, this one done using MaxIm for both compositing and processing. This image used the best 45 minutes, then I did pixel math to subtract 250 units from the image, and Digital Development (FFT, low-pass, hard.) Ane here is yet another version of NGC 2903. This one was processed exclusively using MaxIm. I used averaging instead of median on all calibration, then did a Digital Development filter (Kernal, low-pass) and finally a contrast stretch here. I think this one has a more natural look to it, less over-processed.

NGC3810, a spiral galaxy in Leo, magnitude 10.8, dimensions 4'.1 x 2'.8, surface brightness is 12.3 mag/sq arcmin, and a distance of 38 million light years. The frames were shot between 10:13 and 11:23 p.m. the evening of March 26. This composite was made from the best 50 exposures, for a total integration time of 50 minutes. All images were processed in MaxIm with darks, flats and flat-darks, then aligned and composited. Then I did pixel math to subtract 50 units from each pixel. Then I applied an unsharp mask (FFT, low-pass, hard.) The image was finished with a contrast stretch. This object was previously imaged with the 10" LX200.