NGC 4236 Spiral Galaxy (Caldwell 3)

[menardre]

Since the Moon was still going to be very bright last night, I decided to continue imaging in Draco (which is in the North). I came across NGC 4236 which is a very large barred spiral galaxy. I found this while scrolling through SkyTools (Imaging). It is so large that it almost fills the entire image.

When I turned on the software for the Falcon Rotator I found there was an update ... which included a correction to the Falcon driver. This should fix the recent problems that I had with SGP ver 4.1. I decided to continue using SGP ver4.0 at least for this event.

I started imaging at about 9:30PM at which point NGC 4236 was already past the meridian. I was able to capture 120 images (2 minute subs) before it was too low in the West. I used 11 inch SCT and ZWO ASI 2600. Settings were: 0 deg C, 2x2 binning, gain 100.
Platesolve worked flawless all night. Actually not quite true. My first attempt at about 9:15 failed - I believe it was still to bright and with my setting of 8 sec exposure for platesolving could not find enough stars. waiting until 9:30 solved that problem.

NGC 4236 is a barred spiral galaxy about 11.7 million light years away. It is part of the M81 galaxy group.

Roger

NGC 4236 Master_DBEdiv_EzDN_PCC_ArcSinH_GAME_Curves_Curves_EzSR_MLT5321_MLTsharp_MLTsharp.jpg (2.78 MiB) Viewed 550 times

[bluemax]

Roger, awesome colors on the object! Did the color come in with the camera imaging or did you do something with processing ?

[menardre]

Frank

The colors are 'natural'. I used Pixinsight PCC (photometric color calibration) and did not do any further color adjustments other than slight saturation increase.

Roger

[NGC7000]

Wow. It certainly has a different "look" than the other galaxies we normally see on these pages. Whimsical, I'd say. It carries the essence of a Midsummer NIght's Dream. Someone had to say it. Might as well be me.

Very nice, Roger. That would be one I'd like to see in a very large telescope for real. Thanks for posting,

Tom

[menardre]

Tom

Thanks .... the galaxy is actually quite large-- about 2/3 the size of the Moon so using a large telescope you would have to use a very wide field eyepiece. It also has a fairly low surface brightness so you would need a fairly dark sky.

I agree that this would be a really interesting object for observing.

Roger.