M106 and surrounding area

Messier 106 and surrounding area

8th April 2022, Bortle 6

 

Messier 106 and surrounding region shot on 8th April 2022 from my home in North West England. This beautiful spiral galaxy is approximately 22 million light-years distant and contains around 400 billion stars.

 

As a side note, I have had some questions about the spikes seen on the brighter stars (photo 3 for best example) - these occur as a function of the design of the telescope I used for this image and they are not added to the image in post-processing. In fact all stars within the field have these "diffraction spikes", they are just most easily visible on the brightest ones.

 

Equipment:

- Skywatcher EQ6-R pro

- Skywatcher 10 inch f4 Quattro

- Skywatcher Aplanatic coma corrector

- Skywatcher Evoguide 50ED + ZWO ASI 120MM-mini

- ZWO ASI 294MC pro

- ZWO EAF

- Optolong L-pro

- Pegasus Powerbox advance

 

Acqusition:

- Lights, L-pro: 82 x 180s, gain 125, offset 30, cooled to -15c

- Darks: 30

- Flats: 30

- Darkflats: 30

 

Total integration: 4 hours 6 minutes

 

Processing:

- APP, PS, NoiseXterminator, StarXterminator

Done