Centaurus A mosaic with 2-metre telescope (Nik Szymanek)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Centaurus (Cen) · Contains: Centaurus A · NGC 5128

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Centaurus A mosaic with 2-metre telescope

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Centaurus A mosaic with 2-metre telescope

Another one from the archives.
Taken on 09-04-2008 this image is a four pane mosaic of NGC 5128 with the 2-metre Faulkes Telecope South in Australia. This was a lucky result as I'd planned to use the identical Faulkes Telescope North on Hawaii but this was clouded out. The FT chaps asked if I'd like to use the southern telescope instead, which worked well for this target.
I set the telescope to take just two 120-second exposures per RGB filter per pane resulting in a total exposure time of just 48 minutes (the session was much longer as I had to wait for the telescope to slew to the next pane position and then take a short confirmatory exposure to ensure the pointing was good (it was).
For this image I revisited the pane-combined files and recomposited them using modern software.
I really like imaging this target as it's quite unique. It's a snapshot of a collision between two (possibly three) galaxies. The massive elliptical has shredded the interacting spiral (shown in the 'forground'), triggering bursts of new star formation.
Nik Szymanek

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
PixInsight job	K4QS35FY3KE54WS0WM0Y6WMZYXTZRZX4
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h25m25s.996
RA (top/left)	13h25m47s.666
RA (top/right)	13h25m04s.396
RA (bottom/right)	13h25m04s.344
RA (bottom/left)	13h25m47s.611

Dec (center)	-43°00′59″.99
Dec (top/left)	-42°57′21″.10
Dec (top/right)	-42°57′20″.51
Dec (bottom/right)	-43°04′38″.82
Dec (bottom/left)	-43°04′39″.45

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Centaurus A mosaic with 2-metre telescope

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Centaurus A mosaic with 2-metre telescope

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