1_M63_RGBHa plane

Sunflower galaxy, Messier 63, NGC 5055. RGB and Ha composite.

 

Distance: 27 million lyrs

Diameter: 100,000 lyrs

Age: 13.28 billion years

Mass 110 billion solar masses

Apparent size: 7x13 arcmin

Constellation: Canes Venatici, The Hunting Dogs (chasing Ursa Major, The Great Bear)

 

Sunflower Galaxy, part of the M51 Group of galaxies.

 

Photograph taken in Red, Green, Blue broadband filters, and ionised Hydrogen emission line

narrowband filter. Total exposures15.8 hrs.

 

R 2x2 bin - 8x300s = 0.7hrs, 23-24 March 2021

R 2x2 bin- 11x300s (East side) + 14x300s (West side) = 2.1hrs, 30-31 March 2021

G 2x2 bin - 6x600s (East side) = 1hr, 1 June 2021

G 2x2 bin - 16x600s (East side) = 2.7hrs, 2 June 2021

B 2x2 bin - 14x600s (East side) = 2.3hrs, 6 June 2021

B 2x2 bin - 20x300s (East side) = 1 hr, 12-13 June 2021

B 2x2 bin - 18x600s (East side) = 3hrs, 13-14 June 2021

Ha 2x2 bin - 12x900s (East side) = 3 hrs, 9 June 2021

 

Rig:

Imaging scope: SW Startravel 150mm F5, 2.5x Celetron Luminos 2inch imaging barlow, Atik 460EX mono

 

Guide scope: SW Evostar 90mm F10, with guiding XY stage, ZWO 120MM camera

 

Guiding: 2 stage PHD: high frequency guide scope (mount tracking) and low frequency OAG image train guiding (guidescope flex)

 

Mount: Home made German Equatorial pillow block mount, permanently rooftop mounted. Spring loaded DEC axis gearing.

 

Other gadgets: ST4 based anti vibration shutter, ST4 based PEC

 

Processing:

PixInsight: Lights, Darks, Flats, Biases, Align Calibration, StarNet2 star removal/star layer

GradXpert: Gradient removal

Topaz DeNoise AI: Noise removal

Affinity Photo: 32 bit image processing (curves, high pass masking, selective colour)

Done