Colliding Galaxies NGC6769 NGC6770 NGC6771
03-Aug-2018
A galactic merger is happening 165 million light years away between the spiral galaxies NGC 6769, 6770, 6771.
Also of note is the interesting hexagonal ring around NGC 6771. Elliptical galaxy IC 4842 is shown in the bottom-left of the frame. There are many other background galaxies in the deep sky image, some of which are shown below.
Image:
- 102x 300s luminance
- 33x 300s red
- 31x 300s green
- 28x 300s blue
Total integration 16 hours 10 minutes.
Hardware:
- Celestron 11" EdgeHD
- Skywatcher EQ8 Pro mount
- QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik luminance, deep sky RGB filters
- Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
- Starlight Xpress Active Optics
- Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
- Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II
Location:
- Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)
- Imaged over 3 nights. New Moon.
Software:
- Planning & camera alignment with Aladin 10
- Captured with TheSkyX Professional
- Guiding with PHD2
- FocusLock live focusing
- PixInsight: calibrate, align, stack, crop, dynamic background extraction, light deconvolution, noise reduction, stretch, curves.