Caldwell 5
Caldwell 5 - Click here for full resolution
Caldwell 5 is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis, located relatively close to the Milky Way. Despite its size and actual brightness, its location behind dusty areas near the galactic equator makes it difficult to observe, leading to the nickname "The Hidden Galaxy". If the galaxy were not obscured, it would be visible by naked eye. The dust makes it difficult to determine its precise distance; modern estimates range from about 7 to 11 million light-years. The galaxy was discovered by William Frederick Denning in 1892. It is one of the brightest in the IC 342/Maffei Group, one of the closest galaxy groups to the Local Group. Edwin Hubble first thought it to be in the Local Group, but it was later determined not to be a member.
source: Wikipedia
NGC/IC:
Other Names:
Object:
Constellation:
R.A.:
Dec:
Transit date:
Transit Alt:
IC342
Hidden Galaxy
Intermediate spiral galaxy
Camelopardalis
03h 46m 48s
+68° 06.0′
04 December
59º N
Conditions
Caldwell 5 can be well observed from Autumn until late Winter, with maximum altitudes reaching 59° in the North. Caldwell 5 was photographed over 7 nights, during the month of November 2024 from the remote observatory at IC Astronomy in Oria, Spain.
Equipment
The default rig at the observatory was used. The core of this rig is a Planewave CDK-14 telescope on a 10Micron GM2000 mount, coupled to a Moravian C3-61000 Pro full-frame camera. The RoboTarget module in Voyager Advanced automated the process to find optimal time-slots during astronomical night.
Telescope
Mount
Camera
Filters
Guiding
Accessoires
Software
Planewave CDK14, Optec Gemini Rotating focuser
10Micron GM2000HPS, custom pier
Moravian C3-61000 Pro, cooled to -10 ºC
Chroma 50mm Luminance, Red, Green and Blue unmounted, Moravian filterwheel L, 7-position
Unguided
Compulab Tensor I-22, Windows 11, Dragonfly, Pegasus Ultimate Powerbox v2
Voyager Advanced, Viking, Mountwizzard4, Astroplanner, PixInsight 1.8.9-3
Imaging
Bright and straightforward targets like M32 are ideal objects to photograph during full moon periods, as was done here. For that reason, all exposures were limited to 180s for both RGB and Luminance filters. The image was shot as a broadband image, using standard LRGB filters. A total of approximately 19h of exposure was captured. Note that the image is shown with North pointing downwards. This was done to get a nicer composition.
Resolution (original)
Focal length
Pixel size
Resolution
Field of View (original)
Image center
9447 × 6300 px (59.5 MP)
2585 mm @ f/7.3
3.8 µm
0.30 arcsec/px
47' x 31'
RA: 03h 46m 46.257s
Dec: +68° 05’ 28.60”
Processing
All images were calibrated using Darks (50), Flats (50) and Flat-Darks (50), registered and integrated using the WeightedBatchPreProcessing (WBPP) script in PixInsight. All further processing was done in PixInsight, including the use of scripts and tools developed by RC-Astro, SetiAstro, GraXpert, and others. For a step-by-step description of the processing techniques applied, see process flow below.
For stretching I used the Bill Blanshan stretch script, which I had not used for a while. In a direct comparison with the SetiAstro script, and standard STF stretching the Bill Blanshan script appeared to give the most pleasing result. To add selective contrast and tune to appropriate black levels, GHS and HistogramTransformation worked well in subsequent steps.
The rest of the processing followed a pretty standard workflow.
Processing workflow (click to enlarge)
This image has been published on Astrobin.
