Urban NGC4236

Here is another in a series of urban efforts taken from my driveway. This image needs a much longer exposure and dark skies to really do it justice as in this version taken by Ron Brecher, but as an urban shot from Bortle 6 to 7 skies with only 90 minutes of exposure it holds up well. It is also the first shot using my new Focus Cube V2 focuser and the shot was entirely automated and run remotely from my coach. After watching TV for a while and a nap I woke up to 90 minutes of perfectly autofocused data. According to Wikipedia - NGC 4236 (also known as Caldwell 3) is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Draco. The galaxy is a member of the M81 Group, a group of galaxies located at a distance of approximately 11.7 million light years (3.6 Mpc) from Earth. The group also contains the spiral galaxy Messier 81 and the starburst galaxy Messier 82. NGC 4236 is located away from the central part of the M81 group at a distance of 14.5 million light years (4.45 Mpc) from Earth.

Object NGC4236  Object RA 12:16:42 Dec 16:28:01 Date 14 May 2020 Conditions Excellent seeing and large amount of light pollution. Sky was ~ 18.7 mag/arcsec^2. Exposure 90 minutes (30 X 180 seconds)  ISO 800 Camera Canon 60Da DSLR (no filters) 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. Image binned 2 by 2. Final sharpening rounded out the processing. Since the 60Da has on sensor dark suppression no darks were used in the calibration.