I photographed another edge-on galaxy this weekend, since we had several good nights in a row. This time, I focused on M104, the Sombrero Galaxy. It’s a spiral galaxy on the Southern border of the constellation Virgo, about 28 million light years away from Earth. A dust lane passes in front of the galactic center, which likely hosts a supermassive black hole, and this bright bulge with dark rim gives the galaxy it’s more popular name.
The Sombrero Galaxy apparent size is 8 by 3 arcmins, so it looks quite small in my wide-field telescope. It’s also pretty low in the sky here, where it reaches a maximum altitude of 27 degrees. I decided to collect only luminance data, due to the limited visibility of this object and to obtain maximum detail in my available time.
Update 11 May 2018: Added 1.5 hours of color data.
Dates: 6 May 2018, 10 May 2018
Telescope: Teleskop-Service 80/480 triplet with 2″ TS 0.79X reducer/flattener and Baader 2″ UV/IR filter
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-C with EFW-8 and ZWO 31mm filters
Mount: Skywatcher EQ5 Pro
Exposure: 3.1 hours
L: 80 x 60 sec (gain: 74, bin 1×1, -15C)
RGB: 36/36/35 x 60 sec (gain: 74, bin 1×1, -15C)
Software: APT, PHD2, EQMOD, PixInsight
SQM: 17.5
For fun, I compared the luminance data to one of my first astro images, shot in 2016. The older image was made with a simple ST80 Achromat and Canon 450D camera, and consists of 40 x 30 sec subs.
Astro Virus 