SUPERCEDED-NEWER VERSION AVAILABLE---M106 - Galaxy in Canes Venatici
SUPERCEDED-NEWER VERSION AVAILABLE---M106 - Galaxy in Canes Venatici
SUPERCEDED-NEWER VERSION AVAILABLE---M106 - Galaxy in Canes Venatici
M106 is an X-Ray emitting Seyfert galaxy about 25 million light years from us. Most likely, the x-ray emissions are telling us that part of this galaxy is collapsing into a black hole. This image readily shows the galaxy NGC 4248 at about 5 o'clock.

In this photo, North is to the Right. This image is cropped to 73% of the original full frame.

Exposure Details
Lens Celestron C-8 SCT with Lumicon telecompressor
Focal Length 1100mm
Focal Ratio f/5.5
 
Mount Schaefer GEM - 7 1/2
Guiding Unguided
 
Camera Canon 350D - unmodified
Exposure 304 subexposures of 30 seconds each at ISO 1600 - about 2 1/2 hours total
Calibration 30 darks, 30 flats, 30 bias
 
Date April 4, 2011
Temperature
SQM Reading
Seeing 3 of 5
Location Pine Mountain Club, California
 
Software Used Images Plus 4.0 for camera control, calibration, stacking and digital development. Photoshop CS5 used for flat fielding, black point, white balance, saturation adjustments, screen mask invert, high pass filter. Noise Ninja used for noise reduction.
Notes For this exposure, I was using my original Schaefer homemade drive corrector. This drive corrector had problems, as the slowest speed to which I could adjust was running slightly fast. Also, the slow button didn't work, so I was limited to 30 second subexposures before the drift in Right Ascension caused the stars to be too out of round.

I reprocessed this image on 12/11/11using improved techniques I've learned in order to bring out the outer galaxy halo and improve the colors.

If you liked this picture, you might also want to view:

M106 - A Seyfert Galaxy in Canes Venatici