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The Leo Trio: M65, M66, and NGC 3628
Galaxies in Leo
M65 is the spiral galaxy at upper right, M66 the spiral at lower right, and NGC 3628 the edge-on galaxy at the left. The total field of view is approximately 45 arcmin high x 65 arcmin wide. North is at upper left in this image.
I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of dust lane detail brought out by the DDP processing in MaxIm. Presumably the long total exposure (collected over two nights) helped. However, the raw frames of this CCD image were plagued by gradients and required extensive manipulation before and after combination to neutralize the background sky color.
| Date | 2003-02-07, -08 |
| Scope |
Astro-Physics 130 EDFs refractor at f/6 with ST-10XME CCD camera at -15 °C on the A-P 1200 GTO mount. Guided with the internal guide chip. SBIG CFW-8 filter wheel. |
| Exposure |
Twenty 5 min exposures R and G, seventeen 5 minute B exposures (cut short by weather). Total 285 minutes. |
| Processing |
Raw frames calibrated and debloomed with Wodaski's Debloomer plug-in in MaxIm 3.09. Master R, G, and B frames were then created and Wodaski's gradient removal processing was then applied to the individual color masters. The RGB color combine was then carried out in MaxIm. The image was then imported into Photoshop and adjusted with Levels, Curves, and Color correction. Finally, smoothing was applied with SGBNR. |