Russell Cockman
M104 (April21)-close
Two productive nights at the Astronomical Society of Victoria's dark sky site out of Heathcote. Skies were clear and still and the Milky Way was fabulous after midnight. I've imaged The Sombrero in the past, but have gained much experience since the last imaging, so I decided to image it again. I'm pleased I did!
Located in an attractive field of colourful (Milky Way) stars, the Sombrero Galaxy (M104, NGC 4594) is a substantial object about 30 million light years away. Seen close to edge on, its highly structured dust lane, very bright core and huge halo of unresolved reddish-yellow stars are key features. The core is believed to contain a supermassive black hole having a mass of about 1 billion solar masses.
The equipment performed very well and I am delighted to have resolved details in the dust lane and structures on the disk.
Technical stuff: Takahashi TOA-130 OTA working at 1500mm and f11 on a Takahashi EM-200 Temma2 mount, SBIG STL11000M monochrome camera cooled to -15 degC. 7.5 hrs of images taken through L, R, G and B filters, calibrated in CCDStack2, aligned in RegiStar, stacked in CCDStack2 and finished off in Photoshop CS5. Original image has been cropped to ~ 0.4 x 0.2 deg.
M104 (April21)-close
Two productive nights at the Astronomical Society of Victoria's dark sky site out of Heathcote. Skies were clear and still and the Milky Way was fabulous after midnight. I've imaged The Sombrero in the past, but have gained much experience since the last imaging, so I decided to image it again. I'm pleased I did!
Located in an attractive field of colourful (Milky Way) stars, the Sombrero Galaxy (M104, NGC 4594) is a substantial object about 30 million light years away. Seen close to edge on, its highly structured dust lane, very bright core and huge halo of unresolved reddish-yellow stars are key features. The core is believed to contain a supermassive black hole having a mass of about 1 billion solar masses.
The equipment performed very well and I am delighted to have resolved details in the dust lane and structures on the disk.
Technical stuff: Takahashi TOA-130 OTA working at 1500mm and f11 on a Takahashi EM-200 Temma2 mount, SBIG STL11000M monochrome camera cooled to -15 degC. 7.5 hrs of images taken through L, R, G and B filters, calibrated in CCDStack2, aligned in RegiStar, stacked in CCDStack2 and finished off in Photoshop CS5. Original image has been cropped to ~ 0.4 x 0.2 deg.