M108, a Barred Spiral Galaxy
M108, a Barred Spiral Galaxy, is a very distant galaxy. It is about 46 million light years away. Keep in mind that light travels 186,000 miles every second. And a light year is how far that light would travel in a year of seconds. That's pretty far, right? But this galaxy is 46,000,000 light years away. That explains why it appears not quite as sharp as some of the other galaxies imaged here. Remember that a spiral galaxy is shaped more or less like a huge plate. But M108, in this image, looks to be the shape of a cigar. That's because we are viewing M108 from its side view. A little bit of zooming in on your display will reveal hints of the brown dust lanes in the galaxy. You can see a galaxy's dust lanes in much more detail by looking at the M31 Galaxy image in this Flickr collection; it's only 2.5 million light years from us. The good eye looking closely at M108 will also see little hints of blue. Those are areas of active star formation within M108.
The image above was taken from a Bortle 4 site in Landers, CA, in the USA on a New Moon night. Telescope: TPO Ritchey-Chretien 6 inch with FL 1370mm and F9. Guiding was with an Orion 50mm Guide Scope FL 242mm with a ZWO ASI183MC for the guide camera with PHD2 auto-guiding software. Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro. Main imaging camera: ZWO ASI294MC Pro at the prime focus. Exposures: 14 x 240s with Gain 120 and Bin 1 x 1. No darks, flats or bias frames. Processed in PixInsight. Moderate cropping. Polar alignment was with SharpCap Pro.
M108, a Barred Spiral Galaxy
M108, a Barred Spiral Galaxy, is a very distant galaxy. It is about 46 million light years away. Keep in mind that light travels 186,000 miles every second. And a light year is how far that light would travel in a year of seconds. That's pretty far, right? But this galaxy is 46,000,000 light years away. That explains why it appears not quite as sharp as some of the other galaxies imaged here. Remember that a spiral galaxy is shaped more or less like a huge plate. But M108, in this image, looks to be the shape of a cigar. That's because we are viewing M108 from its side view. A little bit of zooming in on your display will reveal hints of the brown dust lanes in the galaxy. You can see a galaxy's dust lanes in much more detail by looking at the M31 Galaxy image in this Flickr collection; it's only 2.5 million light years from us. The good eye looking closely at M108 will also see little hints of blue. Those are areas of active star formation within M108.
The image above was taken from a Bortle 4 site in Landers, CA, in the USA on a New Moon night. Telescope: TPO Ritchey-Chretien 6 inch with FL 1370mm and F9. Guiding was with an Orion 50mm Guide Scope FL 242mm with a ZWO ASI183MC for the guide camera with PHD2 auto-guiding software. Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro. Main imaging camera: ZWO ASI294MC Pro at the prime focus. Exposures: 14 x 240s with Gain 120 and Bin 1 x 1. No darks, flats or bias frames. Processed in PixInsight. Moderate cropping. Polar alignment was with SharpCap Pro.