NGC 1097 and background galaxies

This was a tough image to process because of how faint the stellar streams are. Nonetheless, I think I did a pretty good job balancing out the brightness of the galaxy with the streams. I also am still fine-tuning my MMT HDR method, which works pretty well to bring out detail. There is a far better and deeper image taken by Mike Selby here: https://throughlightandtime.com/ngc_1097_lrgb_ha-rev-3_cdk_1000_2-may-2023/

Spiral galaxy NGC 1097 shines in southern skies, about 45 million light-years away in the heated constellation Fornax. Its blue spiral arms are mottled with pinkish star forming regions in this colorful galaxy portrait. They seem to have wrapped around a small companion galaxy above and right of center, about 40,000 light-years from the spiral’s luminous core. That’s not NGC 1097’s only peculiar feature, though. This very deep exposure hints of faint, mysterious jets, seen to extend well beyond the bluish arms. In fact, four faint jets are ultimately recognized in optical images of NGC 1097. The jets trace an X centered on the galaxy’s nucleus, but probably don’t originate there. Instead, they could be fossil star streams, trails left over from the capture and disruption of a much smaller galaxy in the large spiral’s ancient past. A Seyfert galaxy, NGC 1097’s nucleus also harbors a supermassive black hole.

Image:

Full-quality image here: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53052983735_634ac7e92c_o.png

Annotated Image:

Full-quality image here: https://theastroenthusiast.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/NGC1097_annotated.jpg

Details:

Telescope: Planewave CDK24
Camera: FLI PL 9000
Filters: L,R,G,B
Location: El Sauce Observatory, Río Hurtado, Coquimbo Region, Chile
Date of Observations: 2/23/2022, 9/20/2022, 10/15/2022, 10/17/2022, 10/30/2022, 11/25/2022
L: 14 x 600s (1h 20min)
R: 15 x 600s (1h 30min)
G: 14 x 600s (1h 20min)
B: 14 x 600s (1h 20min)
Processing: Pixinsight
Credits: Data: Telescope Live; Processing: William Ostling

Processing:

Creation of Integrated Master Frames:
- Images were cosmetic corrected for hot pixels
- The subframes were weighted, registered, and normalized integrated
in WBPP
- The channels were manually integrated and drizzled
Preparation of master frames:
- Stacking artifacts were cropped
- RGB channels were combined to create an RGB image
- RGB image was plate solved
- Starless DBE was applied to L, RGB as follows:
      - Starnet 2 was applied to a clone of the target image, creating an image with stars and an image without stars
      - DBE was applied on the starless image to create a background model
      - The background model was subtracted from the stars image
Deconvolution of the L, RGB
- a PSF was created using the dynamic PSF process
- Linear starnet was applied to create a starless image and a star mask
- the linear image was duplicated, stretched, clipped, and convoluted to create a mask
- The starless image was deconvoluted using the RVC algorithm
- the stars were added back in
- DeepSNR noise reduction was applied to RGB
 and L
- A starless and stars version was created using starnet2
Non-linear Adjustments:
- Histogram stretch
- LRGB combination
- Histogram stretch
- MMT HDR
- HDRMST
- Black point adjustment
- Saturation adjustment
- Curves adjustment