NGC 3359 (2025)

This is my version of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 3359, located approximately 59 million light-years (LY) away in the constellation Ursa Major. The galaxy is slightly smaller than our own Milky Way at 108,500 LY across and has two prominent spiral arms with several dense star forming regions. I would have liked to get more than 2.3 hrs of data but if you read my post of my previous image, I was in the process activating my EdgeHD800 and having a humorous time with the stars. This image was after the collimation was adjusted and the focal reducer removed and although the stars do look better, they are not anything to write home about - they looked as if they were pinched somehow.

Originally, I thought it was because the dew heater ring was too tight on the corrector plate, however, a couple of people responded to a youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VY7m67G9S8&t=6s) I made about this issue with the suggestion that I was basically heating it too much. I used the AstroZap Dew Heater controller and had it set at 50% power but turned it down to 20% power and the problem went away. After fixing the issue over the next few days I moved on to another project.

Since only 2.3 hrs of data was collected for this image, it was quite noisy, however, the new noise reduction and other processing techniques we have available now do a great job at reducing the noise.

Higher Quality:

https://www.astrobin.com/llm27n/?nc=collection&nce=712

NGC 3359 (2025)
Dates: 3-27-25
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC Pro
Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 800
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 2032mm (native)
F/10 (native)
Focal Reducer: None
Mount: Orion Atlas Pro
Filter Adaptor: ZWO Filter Drawer
Filter: Optolong Luminosity (2-inch)
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to an Orion ST80
Exposure: Lum 93 x 90
Gain: 139
Offset 0
Temp: -10 C
Processing: Asiair app, PixInsight, Photoshop, BlurXT, NoiseXT, StarX, Bill's Color Masks, Bill's Stretching, GraXpert, Topaz Denoise

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