Hercules Cluster

[RickJ]

Not M13, the galaxy cluster ABELL 2151. Unusual in that it is about 40% spiral galaxies while most clusters have very few spiral galaxies. I took this last September but unknown to me, the screw holding the filter wheel drive motor had fallen out and the screw pivot for the filter wheel itself was very tight. The result was the wheel never lined up a filter properly and often never even moved so was using the wrong filter. No way flats can work under such conditions. By now I could get up early in the morning and start a new series but what with nothing but clouds I spent the last few nights trying to salvage the mess from last fall. Color saturation is low to hide a lot of defects still in the color data, I spent most of my time working on the lum data. Pseudo flats got rid of the vignetting and large dust donuts but the smaller ones had to be dealt with individually on each frame. Then I had to sort out which color filter actually took the image. It often wasn't the one I thought did. Corners were cut off as filters never centered etc. I lost a lot of faint detail but with nothing else to do thanks to clouds I'm posting it anyway.

Full size image at:
http://www.spacebanter.com/attachmen...tid=1686&stc=1

14" LX200R, L=6x10' (out of 18 frames taken), RGB=3x10 minutes (out of 9 attempted in each color), STL-11000XM, Paramount ME.

Rick

[mahesh]

Sir, that is one real deep space composition.

Just awesome.

thank you for sharing

[JAICOA]

Wow Rick, This is simply awesome!, Did you rent a scope on the Hubble. Fantastic image even for it's size the distant galaxies shows details and the photo is very sharp. Clear Skies my friend.

[winensky]

Breathtaking. Just incredible clarity.

Kind regards
Matt

[bunker9603]

That is a great shot! I could stare at that image for hours!

[Veeger]

Very interesting target, Rick; lots to look at.

Best,
Veeger

[paul f. campbell]

Hi rick This a wonderful image indeed. Great job. Clear skies to you Paul.

[RickJ]

Thanks for all the nice compliments. I know I can do it a lot better now that the filter wheel works right so my flats match.

Rick

[stargazer_7000]

hi Rick,

what a decent shot for a relative short exp.time!
you did a great job on this difficult cluster. many subtile structures are visible in a couple galaxies!
cool!

[RickJ]

hi Rick,

what a decent shot for a relative short exp.time!
you did a great job on this difficult cluster. many subtile structures are visible in a couple galaxies!
cool!

My skies are very dark here which helps and I used 18 micron pixels, They are great light buckets. My seeing rarely allows 1x1 binning unfortunately. Still if all 18 lum subs had been usable it would have helped greatly. With only the spring in the wires holding the drive motor to the filter wheel in place most frames came out unusable. I'd set this up then went out for the evening so wasn't home to watch the frames come in. I looked at a couple of the last frames when I got back but didn't see anything wrong. Only later did I realize the wheel had stopped turning the last few hours and all were blue frames with the left edge cut off.

Rick