Ultra-deep imaging with amateur telescopes

TL;DR

Amateur telescopes and imaging techniques have proven capable of revealing ultra-deep, low surface brightness structures around nearby galaxies, contributing valuable data to galaxy formation and evolution studies.

Contribution

This paper reviews recent advances in ultra-deep imaging using amateur telescopes, highlighting new discoveries of tidal features and low surface brightness systems.

Findings

Detection of large-scale tidal structures around nearby galaxies.

Discovery of previously unknown low surface brightness systems.

Identification of shell-like features in the Magellanic Clouds.

Abstract

Amateur small equipment has demonstrated to be competitive tools to obtain ultra-deep imaging of the outskirts of nearby massive galaxies and to survey vast areas of the sky with unprecedented depth. Over the last decade, amateur data have revealed, in many cases for the first time, an assortment of large-scale tidal structures around nearby massive galaxies and have detected hitherto unknown low surface brightness systems in the local Universe that were not detected so far by means of resolved stellar populations or HI surveys. In the Local Group, low-resolution deep images of the Magellanic Clouds with telephoto lenses have found some shell-like features, interpreted as imprints of a recent LMC-SMC interaction. In this review, I discuss these highlights and other important results obtained so far in this new type of collaboration between high-class astrophotographers and professional astronomers in the research topic of galaxy formation and evolution.