Telescope Reviews: Re: Arp 268/Holmberg II A nearby irregular galaxy

Thanks bill.

I'm surprised this is a virtually ignored member of the M81 group. Seems lots of imagers go after the other members of the group (at least northerners) but skip this one. Maybe it's because it doesn't have an IC or NGC number and gets overlooked. Something about such galaxies seems to scare away folks from even trying it. I can think of a lot of NGC and IC galaxies that are much harder targets than this one.

I think it one of my better Arp efforts. Everything seemed to work that night. I went a couple months with a loose set screw allowing the camera to go out of square causing problems. Even when it held square the light seal was lost so stray light was getting in and doing all sorts of harm. Also tilted slightly (at f/10 you can survive some tilt and stay in focus as the depth is rather large at that f ratio) the dust mots didn't quite line up on the flats adding to processing woes. This is one of the first images after I finally realized what was going on and tightened down that offending set screw. Due to the mounting method the camera was never in danger of coming off, just tilting and/or letting stray light in. Unfortunately I still have a bunch of Arps from that "loose screw" era to process. I keep putting them off. Wait long enough and it will be time to reimage them rather than fight the processing. Procrastination isn't all bad.

Rick

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