Another trial of 5 minutes LRGB images, which I think paid off again. Goes against any theory, 1 or 2 minute subs should be good enough, maybe even better. We had last week several clear skies in which I took 2 minutes subs of other targets, that will maybe show some better comparison.
This triple is of course worth the "trip" to this area of the sky! While NGC 4725 is large enough for 900mm focal length, the "show" might be stolen by NGC 4747, with its highly disturbed form. According to Wikipedia, the disturbance is the result from a collision with NGC 4725, roughly 320 million years ago. Those 2 are right now approximately 370,000 light years away from each other at a distance of 35 million light years, which makes it indeed very likely that this interaction took and takes place. I was actually very surprised by this, since in the image the distance "looks" much further, a tribute to those 900mm focal length I guess 😊.
I barely reduced the stars for this image. While they are often distracting when imaging nebula, they do somehow belong to galaxy images, or am I just too "bored" with galaxies on their own? You tell me!
And I would like to make a shoutout to
@Vitali, his wonderful image of NGC 4725 and 4712 (
https://www.astrobin.com/p3we7s/) inspired me to go further with my processing than I usually would have done. I was already happy with my result when I saw his for the first time, and then I thought, ok ... my image needs a bit more attention, the difference cannot be that big! While it was clear that I could not get his final superb result, at least I came close enough to make me happy. A comparison image can be seen in version C (thanks Vitali for letting me post this!).
Carpe noctem!!
* This image was not and will not be submitted for IOTD consideration
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