M63 Sunflower Galaxy in Canes Venatici

Messier 63 is also known as the Sunflower Galaxy and is one of the most beautiful galaxies in the night sky, so-called due to the wispy spiral arms and bright centre that give it a floral appearance.

 

It may be a spiral, but a closer look at pictures of the Sunflower Galaxy reveals that its spiral arms are not distinct, defined structures like those of the Whirlpool Galaxy, for example. Instead, it appears to have an indeterminate number of spiral arms bound closely together, and is what's known as a flocculent spiral galaxy, giving the Sunflower Galaxy its floral appearance.

 

The Sunflower Galaxy is located about about 27 million lightyears away from Earth and is slightly larger than our Milky Way.

 

I took this image on the night of Monday 6 April with my C11 telescope. It is integrated from 95 exposures of two minutes each.

 

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Telescope: Celestron C11-A XLT Schmidt Cassegrain OTA

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

 

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Plus

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 86 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

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

Flat 30 at 1.1 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Dark Flat 30 at 1.1 seconds, gain 101 temp -10C

 

Bortle 4 sky.

Integrated the saved frames in Astro Pixel Processor.

Processed in PixInsight

Captions added in Photoshop CS4

 

Done