NGC 1073 is a barred spiral galaxy visually located in the constellation Cetus. Technical Information: Ha:L:R:G:B: 600:1320:180:240:240 (a total of 43 hours hours of light-frame exposure time); luminance was a blend of forty 15-minute images and twenty-four 30-minute images; red was a blend of twelve
15-minute images through the red filter and thirty 20-minute images through an Ha filter; green consisted of sixteen 15-minute exposures, while blue consisted of twelve 20-minute exposures. Equipment: RC Optical Systems 14.5 inch Ritchey-Chretien carbon fiber truss telescope, with ion-milled optics and RCOS field flattener, at about f/9, and an SBIG STX-16803 camera with
internal filter wheel (SBIG filter set), guided by an SBIG AO-X, all riding on a Bisque Paramount ME German Equatorial Mount. Image Acquisition/Camera Control: Maxim DL, controlled with ACP Expert/Scheduler, working in concert with TheSky X. Processing: All images calibrated (darks, bias and sky flats), aligned, combined and cropped in Pixinsight. Color combine in Pixinsight. Some finish work (background neutralization,
color calibration, BlurXterminator and NoiseXterminator) done in Pixinsight; some cleanup finish work was done in Photoshop CC. Location: Data acquired remotely from Sierra Remote Observatories, Auberry, California, USA. Date: Images taken on many nights in September and October of 2023. Image posted April 28, 2024. Date: Image scale of full-resolution image: 0.56 arcseconds per pixel. Seeing: Generally good; luminance images varied in FWHM from 1.6 to 2.5 arcseconds. CCD Chip temperature: -25C Copyright 2023, 2024
Mark de Regt
This galaxy is fairly distant, at 55 million light years away; it is about 80,000 light years in diameter (somewhat smaller than our Milky Way galaxy).
As is often the case with large-field deep-sky photographs, there are a lot of tiny (meaning, of course, very far away) galaxies in the background of this photo.