Caldwell 43
NGC 7814
35’ x 23’ | 0.3”/px | 7161 × 4652 px | full resolution
Pegasus
RA 00h 03m 09s Dec +16° 09’ 59” | 0°
Caldwell 43 (also known as NGC 7814 or UGC 8) is a spiral galaxy about 40 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. The galaxy is seen edge-on from Earth. It is sometimes referred to as "the little sombrero", a miniature version of Messier 104. The star field behind NGC 7814 is known for its density of faint, remote galaxies as can be seen in the image here, in the same vein as the Hubble Deep Field. It's among the few bright galaxies that exhibit modest distortion and twisting of the galaxy's plane in optical wavelengths. The light from the distant background galaxies becomes more red as it passes through NGC 7814's halo. This has been used to determine the amount of gas and dust in the halo. One supernova has been observed in NGC 7814: SN 2021rhu (Type Ia, mag 15.66) was discovered by Automatic Learning for the Rapid Classification of Events (ALeRCE) on 1 July 2021.
source: Wikipedia
Data Acquisition
Data was collected over 6 nights in September 2025, using a 14” reflector telescope with full-frame camera at the remote observatory in Spain. Data was gathered using standard LRGB filters. A total of approximately 20 hours of data was finally combined to create the final image.
Location Remote hosting facility IC Astronomy in Oria, Spain (37°N 2°W)
Sessions
Frames
Equipment
Telescope
Mount
Camera
Filters
Guiding
Accessoires
Software
Planewave CDK14 (2563mm @ f/7.2), Optec Gemini Rotating focuser
10Micron GM2000HPS, custom pier
Moravian C3-61000 Pro (full frame), cooled to -10 ºC
Chroma 2” LRGB unmounted, Moravian filterwheel L, 7-position
Unguided
Compulab Tensor I-22, Dragonfly, Pegasus Ultimate Powerbox v2
Voyager Advanced, Viking, Mountwizzard4, Astroplanner, PixInsight 1.9.3
Processing
All processing was done in Pixsinsight unless stated otherwise. Default features were enhanced using scripts and tools from RC-Astro, SetiAstro, GraXpert, CosmicPhotons and others. Images were calibrated using 50 Darks, 50 Flats, and 50 Flat-Darks, registered and integrated using WeightedBatchPreProcessing (WBPP). The processing workflow diagram below outlines the steps taken to create the final image.
StarXTerminator left a tiny bit of the galaxy in the Stars-only image. To prevent this from happening the technique as described here was applied.
The rest of the processing followed largely a standard processing workflow.
Processing workflow (click to enlarge)
This image has been published on Astrobin.
