M104-The Sombrero Galaxy
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Cropped Image
Description:
The
Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104 or NGC 4594, is and unbarred spiral
galaxy in the constellation Virgo. It has a bright nucleus, a
large central bulge, and my favorite visually, a prominent dust lane.
The dark dust lane and bulge give this galaxy the appearance of a
sombrero.
At 9.0 magnitude, this galaxy is one, if not my favorite galaxy
to observe through my 20" Obsession telescope visually.
This
was my first trip to Fort McKavett that I was not haunted by winds. (At
least Friday night) I was able to obtain suitable 64 subframes
out of 74.
Photographic Details:
Date & Location: April 4th, 2008, Fort Mckavett, Texas.
Scope: Obsession 20” f/5 on a
Tom Osypowski Dual Axis Equatorial Platform, Orion 100mm f/6 Guidescope.
Autoguider: SC1 Mod Celestron
Neximage Cam, Shoestring GPUSB guide port
interface adapter, and Guidemaster software.
Camera: Canon 20D DSLR (non-modded), homemade serial control shutter release
cable, and DSLR Shutter from Stark Labs.
Filters: None
Conditions: Temp 49F, Humidity 29%, Winds calm, Transparency 9/10, Seeing 7/10.
Exposures: 64 x 60sec @ 3200 ISO Sub Frames, 10 Darks average combined for master dark.
Post-processing: 3504x2336 Raw files converted to Lossless 16-bit FITS, calibrated, aligned, and combined with ImagePlus. Final processing PhotoImpact Pro.
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