M99 Coma Pinwheel Galaxy in Coma Berenices

Messier 99 (M99), also known as the Coma Pinwheel or Virgo Cluster Pinwheel, is an unbarred spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices. The galaxy is a member of the Virgo Cluster. It is about 56 million light years from Earth. Its designation in the New General Catalogue is NGC 4254.

 

The Coma Pinwheel has a linear diameter of 85,000 light years. It is one of the brighter spiral galaxies in the Virgo Cluster and appears almost face-on.

 

Even though the Virgo Cluster Pinwheel is almost the same size as the Milky Way it has an estimated mass of 50 billion solar masses, which is only 5 percent of our galaxy’s mass.

 

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Telescope: Celestron C11-A XLT Schmidt Cassegrain OTA

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

 

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Pro

Main Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -10C

Filter: Optolong L-Pro filter

Focuser: ZWO EAF

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM Mini guidecam

Guide via: ZWO OAG

 

Stacked from:

Lights 48 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Darks 30 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Flat 30 at 230 ms, gain 101, temp -10C

Dark Flat 30 at 230 ms gain 101 temp -10C

 

Bortle 4 sky.

Integrated the saved frames in Astro Pixel Processor.

Processed in PixInsight

Added captions in Photoshop CS4

 

 

 

 

 

Done