NGC 2403

Object: NGC 2403 (Caldwell 7)

Type: Galaxy

Distance: 14 million light years
Constellation: Camelopardalis
Date: 13 March 2007
Equipment: SXV-H9, Vixen ED114 refractor (f.l. 600mm)
Subframes: 25 x 150s 2x2 binned subframes, 16 darks, 16 flats/flat darks, calibrated and stacked in AIP4Win.

This faint fuzzy, barely distinguishable through a 25mm eyepiece on the above refractor from my light-polluted location, reveals itself to be a miniature of the great spiral in Triangulum (Messier 33) when imaged with the magic of CCD.

My notes at the time didn't give a reason for only shooting 25 subs as, coming back to the image, it looks like everything else, such as tracking, quality of flats etc, was pretty much OK. The image therefore suffers from noise which a larger number of sub-frames could have helped beat down.

The loose-limbed nature of this galaxy is clearly distinguishable, however (click on the above image to enlarge). Rob Gendler gives us a much more detailed view of this object here.