M104 Sombrero Galaxy

A 12.2 hr LRGB rendition of the famous edge-on galaxy featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes seen in silhouette against an extensive central bulge of stars. My ground-based DSW Chile 150mm-aperture data (or at least my processing of it) has only blurred details of the dust lanes in the overwhelming glare of M104's bright central bulge. About 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away, M104 is one of the largest galaxies at the southern edge of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy contains a central supermassive black hole [excerpted from APOD 2019 write-up, Wikipedia].

 

Scope used and reducer: Takahashi TOA-150

Mount Used: Astrophysics 1600GTO-AE

Camera Used: FLI ML16200

Filters used: Chroma LRGB

Exposure: Lum: 42x300s, R: 36x300s,G: 36x300s, B: 32x300s

Total: 12.2 h

Processing: PixInsight 1.8.8, PS CS6

 

M104LRGB10cr4.tif 12/29/21

M104LRGB10cr4-2000

M104LRGB10cr4-2002 3/27/22

M104LRGB10cr4-2022Sat 8/14/22

Done