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William Shaheen | all galleries >> Astronomy - Astronomical objects, images and astronomy related projects >> Astro Images by Subject > Abell 2151 - Hercules Galaxy Cluster 20-Feb-2015
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Abell 2151 - Hercules Galaxy Cluster 20-Feb-2015

Distance: 509 mly, in the constellation Hercules
Centered on RA: 16h 05m 21s; Dec: +17° 42' 12" (J2000).
The wavy shaped galaxy is NGC6045.

Telescope configuration: Celestron EdgeHD 1400 with the Celestron 0.7x focal reducer (fl=2737, f/7.7), unbinned, yielding an image scale of 0.40 arc-seconds/pixel.
Camera: SBIG STF-8300M (monochrome) CCD camera. 3 - 15 minute exposures at -15C and no filter , taken between 5:02am and 5:52am MST on Feb 20, 2015. Image capture using TSXPro/Camera Add-on.
Mount: Software Bisque Paramount MX with PEC and ProTrack enabled. Autoguided with an SBIG Sti autoguider, a Celestron OAG (off-axis guider) and a Starlight Xpress AOLF (Adaptive Optics Large Format) device using PHD2 autoguiding software.
Post processing: Calibration, alignment, stacking in ImagesPlus 6.0 using 7 dark frames, 9 bias frames and 9 flat frames; DDP and curves in Nebulosity3; Adaptive Richarson-Lucey deconvolution and noise reduction in ImagesPlus 6.0, 7x7 by 10 passes; unsharp mask in ThumbsPlus, resized to 50%.

To see the galaxies in deeper detail, click on the "original" (full resolution) size below.

20150220_NGC6045_CombSigAvg-NEBddpcrv-IParlnr-50pct.jpg


other sizes: small medium large original auto
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