From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@me.com>

Date: March 9, 2010 6:25:39 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Leo Galaxy NGC 2903

Hi Milton, 

Both Voyager (which I now have the full version of-since earlier in the year) & ST3 Pro appear to list that fuzzy in the NGC 2903 image as UGC 5086 or PGC 27115. There is an object shown closer still to NGC 2903 though. I`m not sure exactly what you`re speaking about in the M 53 image but I`ll post a couple of snapshots from Voyager to Photos..There are a number of objects around M 53, one quite close...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/photos/album/1710518579/pic/list

HTH.. Mark.

On 10/03/2010, at 10:27 AM, milton_aupperle wrote:

Hi Folks;

Here is Leo Galaxy NGC 2903

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/DSO/NGC2903_MJA_20100305.jpg

taken on March 5th. I managed to catch the faint sweeping arms and a weak companion galaxy (well it might be a companion, or it could be just a faint background galaxy too). I haven't been able to find out what it is for a designation yet.

C8 @ 1150 mm, Grasshopper, six 1x1 15 min luma frames, 3 each binned 2x2 of 6 m red, 4 min green and 3 min blue with Astrodon filters. Even with a Hutech IDAS LPR filter and my sky background is 16,000 ADU. Seeing was not really good during this period, about +/- 5 arc seconds. It was better for the Eskimo nebula and then better again for M64.

I discovered my mount is now very slightly out of polar alignment, so I had some field rotation issues to deal with for processing. One leg of the tripod is out on a piece of brick resting on the dirt/grass, so that I can view a bit higher up (80+°). The back two legs are on the concrete patio:

http://www.outcastsoft.com/AstroImages/Scope02.jpg

Apparently when the snow melted the ground shifted a small amount and threw things off. It's only a + 0.2° rotation over 105 minutes, but that shifts about 6 pixels and causes a major headache for doing the LRGB aligns. That's also why stars on the left side are more elongate than the right side are.

PS: There is also a small "faint fuzzy" in the M53 image I posted yesterday south of the Globular Cluster. I have not found any info on it, but have seen it in other older (2002) amateur images so it's not something new. I'll have to re-shoot with 15 to 20 minute exposure to see what it is.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle