Saturday, May 5, 2018

M109

Continuing the exploration of galaxies in Ursa Major, Messier 109 presents a striking, barred spiral. The galaxy is the brightest member of the M 109 group, and has three satellite galaxies (not visible in this image). This image was taken with the 8 inch f/3.9 scope and the Mallincam AG1.2C. It is a stack of 15 x 20-second integrations--a very short integration time due to cloud, so this noisy image is all I was able to capture.


16 hour integration of the Heart Nebula with the Dwarf 3 telescope

The Heart Nebula can be a challenging object due to its low surface brightness, especially in my neighborhood where I image under Bortle 8/9...