A week with no travelling, clear skies and moonless nights: It would have been morally irresponsible not to image.
So here’s the result of last week: NGC3992, a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation of Ursa Major, at a distance of 85 million lightyears (give or take a few )
This galaxy was quite a challenge to capture: almost 10 hours of data was needed to bring out the details. This object is also very near to the bright star Phad (magnitude 2). Its stray light caused some serious flares in the image. A large amount of post processing effort was spent on trying to minimize these flares.
Telescope: Astrosib RC250 @ f/6 f=1500mm
Camera: QHY9
Mount: Mesumount 2
Guiding: OAG with Lodestar
Exposure: 31x10min L + 9x10min R + 9x10min G + 9x10min B
Date: April 21st & 22nd, 2015
Location: Overijse, Belgium
Bart Delsaert - Astrophotography 