M88 Spiral Galaxy in Coma Berenices

Messier 88

This galaxy's core holds supermassive black hole roughly 100 million times more massive than our Sun.

 

Located approximately 47 million light-years away, M88 is a spiral galaxy with well-defined and symmetrical arms. Although it is a member of the Virgo cluster of galaxies, it appears in the neighbouring constellation of Coma Berenices.

 

M88 contains an active galactic nucleus, meaning the central region of the galaxy is more luminous than the rest of the galaxy. It contains around 400 billion stars and is traveling away from our galaxy.

 

The galaxy is inclined at an angle of about 30 degrees to our line of sight and its inclination makes it appear like a smaller version of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31).

 

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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 186 at 60 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Darks 30 at 60 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