NGC 5566 : Three Very Different Galaxies

Image Description and Details : 

Date image was taken: 6/8/2021

Image Title: NGC 5566 | Three Very Different Galaxies

The wispy 5560 seems as though it is being pulled toward the core of the larger 5566 while little blue 5569 is just hanging out and not visibly deformed. But the different colors suggest to me that all three are being affected by the interaction. The all blue color of 5569 suggests lot of young giant stars while 5566 seems full of older red and yellow stars with little blue to be seen. Meanwhile the most distorted galaxy, 5560, shows the usual blue arms and red/magenta core of a normal spiral. Peculiar indeed!

This was an interesting one to frame compositionally. I shot it at 59 degrees PA but this is rotated back to maybe 0 degrees. I liked the tension that the stacked look brings as you feel a balancing act is underway. The two bright foreground stars where a lucky addition in the way they mirror the colors of the galaxies.

16.33 Hours LRGB, about half of which is luminance. A super-luminance was created by blending the luminance from the RGB masters in with the straight luminance. The about 9 hours of RGB data has a luminance component equal to about 3 hours of luminance. (2/3s of the signal is blocked when you shoot RGB either with an OSC or Mono camera). So the effective luminance is around 11 hours. As long as my RGB data is around the same resolution as my luminance I will also create a super-luminance.

Planewave CDK14
Planewave L-350
QHY600M
Astrodon filters

Copyright: Kevin Morefield