Sunflower Galaxy (M 63)

Was going to try and accumulate more data on this one before posting, but given the horrendous weather recently, I doubt I'll commit more time to it for the foreseeable future.

 

Here is Messier 63 - The Sunflower Galaxy. This is a spiral galaxy estimated to be around 30 million light years distant and containing around 400 billion stars.

 

Data acquired in the early hours on 11th May 2021 from my back garden in North West England.

 

Equipment:

- Skywatcher EQ6R-pro

- ZWO ASI 294MC-pro

- Explore Scientific ED APO 102mm F7 FCD-100 Triplet Carbon Fibre

- Hotech SCA 1x field flattener

- ZWO ASI-120MM-mini guide camera

- Skywatcher Evoguide 50ED guidescope

- No filter

 

Acquisition:

- Sharpcap polar alignment, ASCOM guiding/dithering with PHD2

- APT image acquisition

- Lights – 65 x 180s at -15c, gain 125, offset 30

- Darks – 30

- Flats – 30

- Dark flats - 30

Done