M100 and NGC 4312 - spiral galaxies
At the center of this image is M 100, a face-on spiral that is part of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. It is located in the constellation Coma Berenices. The distance to it is about 55 million light years -- the same as the rest of the Virgo Cluster. It is also known as NGC 4321.
To the right of it in this image (but south of it on the sky) is another spiral galaxy, NGC 4312. The Cosmicflows-2 catalog (Tully, et. al., 2013) puts the distance to this galaxy as 37.2 million light years -- significantly closer to us than M 100. It is also an edge-on galaxy, giving it a more flattened appearance.
This is a stack of 20 6 min exposures taken from my Bortle 8/9 backyard in Long Beach, CA. I used a Celestron Edge HD 925 at f/2.3 with Hyperstar lens and an Atik 314L+ color CCD camera with a Baader light pollution filter. Preprocessing of subframes in Nebulosity; registration, stacking, and processing in PixInsight; final touches in Photoshop.
M100 and NGC 4312 - spiral galaxies
At the center of this image is M 100, a face-on spiral that is part of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. It is located in the constellation Coma Berenices. The distance to it is about 55 million light years -- the same as the rest of the Virgo Cluster. It is also known as NGC 4321.
To the right of it in this image (but south of it on the sky) is another spiral galaxy, NGC 4312. The Cosmicflows-2 catalog (Tully, et. al., 2013) puts the distance to this galaxy as 37.2 million light years -- significantly closer to us than M 100. It is also an edge-on galaxy, giving it a more flattened appearance.
This is a stack of 20 6 min exposures taken from my Bortle 8/9 backyard in Long Beach, CA. I used a Celestron Edge HD 925 at f/2.3 with Hyperstar lens and an Atik 314L+ color CCD camera with a Baader light pollution filter. Preprocessing of subframes in Nebulosity; registration, stacking, and processing in PixInsight; final touches in Photoshop.