Tag: Messier104

M104 Sombrero galaxy

Spring is a season of the galaxies. Winter nebulae are gone and constellations Lion, Ursa Major, or Virgo offer stunning deep-space objects. The moon was hidden and the wetter was finally good, so I took to opportunity and pointed my telescope into the constellation Virgo and collected some light coming from the Sombrero galaxy, which has been on the way for 32 million years. This galaxy resembles a Mexican hut because it’s surrounded by a dust belt. This is my second attempt to capture M104. The first one, two years ago, was not that successful. Anyway, it’s better than last time, but I still cannot get to the quality of the Hubble Space Telescope. However, my equipment has a better price/performance ratio 🙂

Telescope:Newton 254/1000 mm
Aperture:254 mm
Focal length:1000 mm
Mount:Gemini GF53f
Autoguiding:Orion Mini, TS 50/160 mm
Camera:Moravian instruments G2 8300M @-30C
Corrector:GPU
Filters:Baader L, RGB
Exposure:45xL 300s bin 1×1, 22xRGB 200 s bin 2×2
Date:2017-03-29

M104 Sombrero galaxy

This galaxy looks like Mexican hat, therefore it’s called Sombrero. It’s approximately 28 million light years away from Earth, located in the constellation Virgo. Giant cloud of dust surrounds the galaxy and blocks the light coming from the stars located inside the ring. This makes the galaxy very unique and photogenic. In my opinion, the best picture taken by Hubble space telescope is Sombrero galaxy.

The picture I took has not that high quality, because of triangular stars, which are caused by overtightened primary mirror. Probably in 2016 I will have to photograph this galaxy again.

M104-2015-03-24-Sombrero-30C-300s-12L6RGB-SQM20-pixi