Warning! Not a pretty picture.

We shot this last spring (April 22) using the last few minutes of dark skies after spending most of the 2 hours or so of darkness doing photometry on a superluminus blue variable in NGC 3432. We intended it as a guide for futher observation of this very distant cluster (we were able to pick out about half a dosen of the larger galaxies a few weeks earlier).

Shot using Uppsala amature astronomers 45 cm Newton with 2000 mm focal length, ST-7E CCD. The field is rather narrow (about 8'x6' IIRC) and the exposure is 2x10 minutes (lum).

Attached Images

abell2065.jpg (84.6 KB, 17 views)

Since I do a lot of distant galaxy imaging and some Abell clusters -- next on the list after I finish my Arp quest -- it look pretty to me.

Thanks for the info on 3432 (Arp 206). I'd just figured that star was a highly compressed star cluster rather than an individual star.
http://www.spacebanter.com/attachmen...tid=1967&stc=1
I had lots more trouble with that field star than you did.

Rick

I don't know about pretty, I would classify it under interesting, but there is however a rather distinct spiral just outside of the field of view. I look forward to seeing the result.

As usual a very nice result. I'll have to remember to show that image to the other guys who have been following NGC3432.

One of our members search for supernovas and rediscovered the variable when it flared in 2008. We usually image his discoveries (so far 7 SNs and 3 variables) for confirmation and to provide him with a "pretty" picture in color. This time we were contacted by a Italian research group that asked if they could use our data and since we have a set of photometric filters we have been following it during the recent activity. It's been fun to do real science, apparently we are listed next to the Hubble Space telescope in the draft of the reseach paper.

Thanks for the comments and the image!