by Craig and Tammy Temple
Discovered by William Herschel on January 14, 1788, NGC 4490 (Arp 269) and NGC
4485 are a pair of interacting spiral galaxies located some 26 million
light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. Although these galaxies
are now around 24,000 light-years apart, they are still connected by a trail of
stars. NGC 4490, with a magnitude of 9.5, is the larger of the two galaxies and
is often referred to as the "Cocoon Galaxy."
Telescope: Celestron C8 @ f/8
Accessories: William
Optics 0.8x reducer/flattener vII; Dew control by Dew Buster
Mount: Orion
Atlas EQ-G controlled by EQMOD performance tuned by Astrotroniks
Guiding:
TS-OAG9 Off-axis, using a Starlight Xpress Lodestar via PHD
Camera: QHY9-C
one-shot color CCD @ -20.0C
Filters: Hutech IDAS-LPS-P2
Exposure: 34 x
10min. (5hr. 40min.)
Acquisition: Images Plus Camera Control
v4.0c
Processing: ImagesPlus 4.0 - calibration, align, combine,
HDR-DDP
Post-processing: Adobe Photoshop CS5; Gradient XTerminator; HLVG;
Carboni’s Tools
Date(s): April 9, 12 & 13, 2011
Location: Hendersonville, TN, USA