NGC 7497

NGC7497 is a 12'th magnitude galaxy embedded in a much dimmer  cloud of dust. Although the galaxy is just over 60 million light years away, the dust is local to the Milky Way. Dew cut the last imaging session short and the image really needs triple the exposure to bring out all the detail in the gas cloud, but all in all it's not bad for the exposure. Click on the image to see an earlier processing attempt. Click again to return to this version.

Object NGC 7497  Object RA 23:09:06 Dec +18:11 Exposure 3.75 hours (45 X 5 minutes)  ISO 1600 Camera Canon 60Da DSLR Optics Prime focus of a SkyWatcher Esprit 120 f/7 APO refractor Location SCO, St. Croix, Nova Scotia and Marion Bridge Nova Scotia Processing This image was processed entirely in Images Plus. Calibration, stacking, statistical filter applied to reduce noise before stretching. Three iterations of  masked stretching and split star processing used to enhance the image. At each iteration a starless mask was produces and used for the initial stretch of the original image in the next iteration. Masked noise reduction using a frequency domain lowpass filter applied to the DSO layer and then it was recombined with the star layer. A final edge masked high pass filter was used to add some contrast to the dust cloud. Image binned 2 by 2. Since the 60Da has on sensor dark suppression no darks were used in the calibration.