Terence Galuszka Astrophotography

The barred spiral galaxy NGC1300 in Eridanus; the great river.  NGC 1300 as seen has very distinctive galaxy arms and a nucleus containing blue and red supergiant stars, star clusters, and star-forming regions, with dust lanes and finer structures reaching well out to the tip of the spirals.

In the core of the larger barred structure, the nucleus shows appears as a central bright cluster, without a black hole. Or at least this is the current indication/thinking. In the background are a few more galaxies visible near the top of this image.

I stumbled on this one evening when testing my hyperstar setup with an Orion Deep Sky Color Imager II. I had previously tried to view it using my C11 @ F10, but could never see anything; in part due to local light pollution. With a total surface  magnitude of 11.4 its not the easiest of targets, but is very captivating.  The image here captured at F5.4  using an Orion Deepspace Color Imager II CCD and is a combination of 15x5mins sub frames. At some stage I'll revisit NGC1300 @f10 and take longer exposures using the Starlight Xpress SXVR-M25C. 

Visual observation of NGC 1300 is not possible without a mid-size telescope of at least 8 inches or greater. Even then it is not easy and requires dark skies and good contrast. Using a O-III filter is helpful. The red circles on the location charts below indicate position.

Refer to this hubble image to see it in full detail http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Hubble2005-01-barred-spiral-galaxy-NGC1300.jpg Be warned, its on of the largest Hubble images ever taken.

The chart on the left shows stars the location of NGC1300. Above is the constellation line of Eridanus "The River". Starting at Rigel and flowing south. The arrow marks NGC1300. It is not easy to find and a goto system is advised for smaller telescopes. Southern hemisphere view.

 Technical Details

 Date

August 26 2009

 Location

Wairapara

 Optics

Celestron C11 OTA @ F5.4, Guided using Orion SSAG and ST80 guidescope

 Mount

Celestron CGE

 Camera

Starlight Xpress SXVR-M25C

 Filters

Celestron LPS filter

 Exposure

15x 5mins, 15 darks, bias and light frames.

 Acquisition

NexRemote

 Processing

MaxIm DL EE and Photoshop CS3