NGC 2903

Click on image for larger version.


 At a distance of 20 million light years away NGC 2903 is a very bright spiral galaxy in Leo. It is interesting to note that Messier missed this galaxy in his searches of Leo. As with most face-on spiral galaxies it is easy to see the dust lanes and emission nebulae (pink regions). One of our images of NGC 2903 was used by the European Space Agency as a ground based image (example) for an Hubble Space Telescope image. Please click HERE to see this page. The bottom image is a recent high-resolution attempt of this detailed galaxy.

Equipment

20in RC Optical Systems telescope Operating at f/5.3
Paramount ME Robotic Telescope Mount
SBIG ST10XME CCD camera with color filter wheel

L R G B color production was used to create this image.

Luminance = 75 minutes binned 1x1
 Red = 20 minutes binned 2x2
 Green = 20 minutes binned 2x2
 Blue = 20 minutes binned 2x2
  • Two iterations of L-R deconvolution (sharpening) algorithm using CCDsharp were applied to the luminance image.

  • Digital Development (DDP) via Maxim/DL was also used in order to display the the very dim and very bright details of the image simultaneously.

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    Minimum credit line: Tracey and Russ Birch/Flynn Haase/NOAO/AURA/NSF

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    Updated: 01/28/2003