This spring I am harvesting the galaxies from the sky. After the M104 Sombrero I pointed the telescope into the constellation Ursa Major and focused on M109 Vacuum Cleaner Galaxy, which is located approximately 83 light years from us. Unfortunately, one bright star – Phad was in the visual vicinity and created diffraction spike spreading through the picture. So next time I will change the composition.
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 |
Only few locations on the skies contain so many galaxies as Markarian’s Chain. It belongs to the Virgo galaxy cluster. The brightest galaxies in the center (M84 and M86) were discovered by Charles Messier already in 1781. The smaller one on the left is called NGC 4388, on the right NGC 4402 and at the bottom NGC 4438. These galaxies are located in constellation Virgo between two bright stars Danebola (constellation Leo) and Videmiatrix (Virgo) and they are 50 – 60 million light-years far from the Solar System.
This picture makes me think how big the universe is. Each galaxy contains billions of stars and there is so many of them…
Even though I used my smallest telescope (focal length 600 mm) the whole Markarian’s chain didn’t fit into the field of view. This means I will do mosaic, but probably next year.
M96 is a spiral galaxy located in constellation Leo. It is approximately 31 million Light-years far from Earth and it has same size and mass as our home – Milky Way. Neighboring galaxies M95 and M105 will be captured next time.
Triangulum Galaxy is our neighboring spiral galaxy in distance only 3 Million light years from the Earth. It has diameter approximately 30 light years, which means that it’s 3 times smaller than our home – Milky Way Galaxy. Last year I tried to capture some photons coming from there, but the outcome was not so great, therefore I was waiting one year and here is the outcome:
Pinwheel Galaxy is similar to our own homeland Milky Way Galaxy. It has 170 000 light years in diameter (it takes 170 000 years till the light from one side reaches the other) It’s 21 million light years from the Solar system and is located in the constellation Ursa Major (Big Dipper or Great Bear).
This galaxy is characterized by a high population of H II regions and therefore I adjusted the image acquisition in a way to highlight it. In total, I used four nights to capture this image. The Moon was not bothering and surprisingly, the weather was excellent in the first half of May. The first night I used it just for the luminance channel, the second and third one for RGB channels, and finally the last one for narrow band image of hydrogen alpha. Ha channel was merged with the R channel and therefore the intensity of H II regions was increased. It’s probably my longest total integration time of any galaxy and it was worth it. See for yourself:
| Telescope: | Newton 254/1000 mm |
| Aperture: | 254 mm |
| Focal length: | 1000 mm |
| Mount | Gemini G53f |
| Autoguiding | ZWO 174MM, TS 60/240 mm |
| Camera: | Moravian instruments G2 8300M @-40C |
| Corrector: | Baader MPCC |
| Filters: | Baader LRGB and Ha |
| Exposure: | 42xL, 300 s, 26xHa, 300s bin 1×1, 27xRGB 200 s, bin 2×2 |
| Date: | 2016-05-06 |
The origin of the word galaxy comes from the Greek word “gála”, which means milk and its application to our home galaxy Milky Way – Κύκλος γαλακτικός (Κyklos galacticos).
The galaxies, as we know them, have nothing to do with milk, but they are gravitationally bonded stars, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter.
According to Hubble classification, there are several types of galaxies. For example elliptical, spiral, lenticulars, or irregulars. Our own galaxy – Milky Way – is a barred spiral galaxy. This means from the Earth we can see a white strip of stars. During summer we can see the galactic center in the constellation Sagittarius, which is very photogenic. In the winter we can see not so bright spiral arm in constellations Canis Major, Monoceros, Orion, Gemini Auriga, and Perseus.
Our Milky Way galaxy has a diameter of 100 thousand light-years. This means it takes 100 thousand years for the light to travel from one edge to another. Basically, the distance all the deep space objects like clusters or nebulae is within this range. The distance between galaxies is significantly longer. For example, the distance to the Andromeda Galaxy is approximately 2.5 million light-years. This means that we are looking at a 2.5 million years old picture.
Triangulum Galaxy is located only 3 Million light years from Earth in the constellation, surprisingly, Triangulum.
Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to take more pictures, because of the shi**y weather in Switzerland. So, this galaxy is subscribed in category re-photo at the end of 2016.
Andromeda galaxy is the closed galaxy of our home – Milky Way galaxy. The diameter of Andromeda is approximately 220,000 light years; which is twice more than has Milky Way. It’s only 2.5 million lights away and it’s getting closer. The collision with the Milky Way is predicted to happen in approximately 4 billion years.
This DSO is one of the brightest and the biggest, which makes it relatively easy to photograph. This is actually my second attempt of Andromeda galaxy. One year ago with DSLR camera the picture was not looking so great, therefore I was waiting a year and here is the result:
Probably the most photogenic galaxy is called Whirlpool galaxy, located in the constellation Canes Venatici, close to the Big Dipper. It’s approximately 23 million light years from the Earth and its spirals have 43 thousand light years in diameter, which makes it 1/3 of a size of Milky Way. Whirlpool galaxy is accompanied by dwarf galaxy M51b or NGC5195, which is located at the end of the longest spiral.
As usual, I made my first picture of this galaxy by DSLR and I was not quite happy with the quality, therefore I waited one year and repeated with cooled astro-camera and here it is:
This spiral galaxy is located in constellation Canes Venatici (hunting dogs) and it’s approximately 23 million light years away from earth.
Picture is not optimal, during post-processing I notices triangular stars. So next year I will point my telescope to M106 and collect the photons coming from there again.
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.
This galaxy was discovered by Mr. Bode long time ago in 1774. It’s located 12 million light years from Earth in constellation Ursa Major (Great Bear). This galaxy has a neighbor Cigar galaxy M81 (left).
Leo Triplet is small group of 3 galaxies. They are approximately 35 million light years from Earth. Two of them (M66 – top right and M65 bottom right) were discovered by Charles Messier already in 1780. At that time there was no light pollution, therefore these galaxies were nicely visible. Third one – NGC3628 Hamburger Galaxy (left) is dimmer, therefore was hidden till 1784. It was discovered by William Herschel and catalogued by John Louis Emil Dreyer in New General Catalogue (NGC) of deep space objects.
