Messier 99

Here is M 99, the third of Messier's trio (M 98, M99 and M100) discovered in the spring of 1781.

 

M99 is also a member of the Virgo cluster of galaxies at a distance of 53 million light years.

 

One thing I enjoy about the images from the RC scope is the quality of the colour data. The bright star to the lower right is a magnitude 6.5 orange giant star and the blue-white star to the top right is magnitude 8.9. The galaxy itself has an integrated magnitude of 9.9.

There are many magnitude 16 and fainter galaxies sprinkled across the image.

 

Data gathered end March through April '19. A vigorous jetstream was very unkind to much of the data.

 

T: 8-inch Ritchey-Chretien

C: QSI 583

M: SW EQ8

Done