Barlowed Cent A

[Ignacio]

Gents,

Last Saturday, I acquire 2 hours of this peculiar galaxy from a rural location, in a rather troubled session (ie, flexure in my new guiding setup). It was also the first field test of a new self-made peltier cooler I built for my canon 1000D, that achieves 26°C drop vs ambient (18°C at the sensor level, while acquiring). As always, data reduction and processing, (almost) entirely in Pixinsight 1.8.

Optical train includes an AP130GT and an AP advanced barlow lens operating at 1.8x.

fulres image center crop: http://www.pampaskies.com/gallery3/var/fulres/Cent_A_rural_fulres.JPG

cooler details: http://www.pampaskies.com/gallery3/Equipment/cooler_v3

Thanks for looking!
Ignacio

[kwalker]

First off....incredible shot
the Camera cooler......thats got me thinking.  8)
thank you

[Geoff]

Nice flat field.  Good detail and colour in the galaxy.  Guiding looks ok from here. However, I'm wondering what's causing the fuzzy halos around the stars. With an AP refractor it can't possibly be due to the optics.
Geoff

[Ignacio]

Thank you, kwalker and Geoff, for taking a look and for your feedback.

Geoff: I usually get that kind of star profiles when imaging with the 2x barlow lens (at f/11.5), on nights of variable seeing. In this particular case, there was a jump in fwhm of more than 1" around the middle of the session. I suspect that masked-streaches and morphological reductions accentuate this effect. That being said, I don't dislike the outcome.

cheers
Ignacio