ROAST ::

A crystal-clear night, and having set up a perfect equatorial alignment - it only took a single adjustment; I’m getting better at this - I decided to try for longer exposures on a few targets.

First I targeted NGC 4216, or the Silver Streak galaxy, an edge-on spiral in the Virgo cluster of galaxies. I took 71 shots, of which 5 were failures (Starlink satellites again). Exposures were 60 seconds, with gain 60 and the Astro filter. It’s been post-processed lightly in PhotoDesk, with a small equalisation and gamma adjustment.

Click for much-enlarged view; the target galaxy is in the centre. Various other galaxies are visible here, including NGC 4267 at lower left, NGC 4222 and NGC 4206 above left and below right of the target, and NGCs 4189, 4193 and 4168 on the right. Plus others.

Using long exposures (over a minute) really needs an excellent alignment, so I tried 2-minute exposures on a really hard target: Coddington’s Nebula in Ursa Major. Misnamed, as it’s actually a galaxy thought to contain a lot of dark matter. This is 37 shots with no failures - too late for Starlinks, hah - with 120-second exposures, gain 80 and the Duo-Band filter. The ‘nebula’ is actually pretty faint and barely shows on the original image, but some quite aggressive post-processing in PhotoDesk (gamma, equalisation and balance) has brought it out.