The Sunflower Galaxy
This is an image of The Sunflower Galaxy. Located in the constellation of Canes Venatici the galaxy lies at a distance of around 27 million light-years.
Discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1779 the galaxy was catalogued by Charles Messier as M63 in his catalogue. It is also known as NGC 5055.
The Sunflower Galaxy is an example of a flocculent spiral. Instead of well-defined spiral arms it appears to have many discontinuous arms giving a loosely lumped appearance hence the name.
A large, prominent dark dust lane is also visible at the front margin of the Sunflower.
Imaged with a Skywatcher 120ED Triplet Apo fitted with a field flattener. Images were captured with a ZWO 2600MC camera.
A total of 5.8hrs guided exposures during the night of 1-2 April. An annoying breeze during capture caused some guiding issues but you take what you get here!
Calibrated with temp. matched Darks, Dark Flats and Flats.
Thanks for looking!
The Sunflower Galaxy
This is an image of The Sunflower Galaxy. Located in the constellation of Canes Venatici the galaxy lies at a distance of around 27 million light-years.
Discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1779 the galaxy was catalogued by Charles Messier as M63 in his catalogue. It is also known as NGC 5055.
The Sunflower Galaxy is an example of a flocculent spiral. Instead of well-defined spiral arms it appears to have many discontinuous arms giving a loosely lumped appearance hence the name.
A large, prominent dark dust lane is also visible at the front margin of the Sunflower.
Imaged with a Skywatcher 120ED Triplet Apo fitted with a field flattener. Images were captured with a ZWO 2600MC camera.
A total of 5.8hrs guided exposures during the night of 1-2 April. An annoying breeze during capture caused some guiding issues but you take what you get here!
Calibrated with temp. matched Darks, Dark Flats and Flats.
Thanks for looking!