Urban Whale & Hockey Stick

Here is another in a series of urban efforts taken from my driveway during COVID-19 madness. This is an image of the Whale (NGC4631) and Hockey Stick (NGC4656/7) galaxies. According to Wikipedia - NGC 4631 (also known as the Whale Galaxy or Caldwell 32) is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. This galaxy's slightly distorted wedge shape gives it the appearance of a herring or a whale, hence its nickname. NGC 4656/57 is a highly warped barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Canes Venatici and is sometimes informally called the Hockey Stick Galaxies or the Crowbar Galaxy. The galaxy is a member of the NGC 4631 Group. A Luminous Blue Variable in "super-outburst" was discovered in NGC 4656/57 on March 21, 2005.

Object Whale & Hockey Stick  Image centered on RA12:42:49 Dec 32:17:49 Date 25 April 2020 Conditions Large amount of light pollution Exposure 69 minutes (23 X 180 seconds)  ISO 800 Camera Canon 60Da DSLR Optics SkyWatcher Esprit 120  f/7 APO refractor with  a  focal length of 840 mm Location Bedford, Nova Scotia Processing This image was processed entirely in Images Plus. Calibration, stacking, statistical filter applied to reduce noise before stretching. Masked stretching and split star processing used to enhance the image. Masked noise reduction using a frequency domain lowpass filter applied to the DSO layer and then it was recombined with the star layer. Final sharpening and a slight star reduction rounded out the processing. Since the 60Da has on sensor dark suppression no darks were used in the calibration.