Galaxy Season in Full Swing

This is the time of year is when our night skies are packed full of beautiful galaxies. Some relatively near, some far, beautiful grand design face-on spirals and barred spirals, edge-on spirals, giant elliptical and lenticular galaxies, and the irregular galaxies. Each beautiful and amazing in its own special way.

While I love to image everything from Open and Globular star clusters to the planetary and large HII regions of nebula, it seems I am always in most awe when imaging galaxies. It is just amazing to me to see the HII nebula regions and even globular star clusters in galaxies that are light years away from us. I always like to research my target a little just to see how far away it is. To think the light that is running through my telescope and hitting my camera sensor left these galaxies millions of years ago never ceases to amaze me.

Before bringing in the William Optics Star71 and my Teleskop Service (APM) 107mm triplet, I wanted to finish a project I had started around mid-February. I'm very happy to say that the project did not go un-noticed, and was selected as the Weekly Image Spotlight a couple of weeks ago on The Astro Imaging Channel.  Adam and the guys there really do a great service to those of us in the hobby. If you havent checked them out yet then please do so. Every week they have a special guest on and talk about anything and everything imaginable in the hobby of astro imaging. Each weekly session is also posted to YouTube.

My Levenhuk (GSO) 8" carbon fiber RC is my weapon of choice for most galaxies. The Star71 and TS107 are relatively new scopes, so the RC had been collecting dust instead of photons the last few months. I am very happy to say that it still does a wonderful job on the galaxies. I'd like to share here my first three galaxies to kick off the new season.

Two of them were done last year unfiltered before I bought my Astrodon Gen2 E-series LRGB filters, so I wanted to shoot these again and add some color. The first one I shot though is a relative unknown and doesn't get much attention. I really cant figure out why this galaxy goes un-noticed by most people, and cant help but think that if Messier had discovered it, it would be famous. NGC 3344 is a beautiful face-on barred spiral that is relatively isolated between the constellations Leo and Leo Minor. It is fairly small at about 7 X 7.5 arcminutes, shines at magnitude 10.5, and is about 22.5 million light years away.

In this image shot with the SBIG STF-8300M and RC scope I collected 25 luminance subs of 900 seconds each, along with 11 subs of 600 seconds for each colored filter controlled with the Starlight Xpress (SX) electronic filter wheel. Guiding was done with the SX off-axis guider and the QHY5L-II. All processing was done with PixInsight and Photoshop CS4, and Sequence Generator Pro was used for automated image acquisition.

Next up was NGC 4631 (also known as the Whale Galaxy, or Caldwell 32) in the constellation Canes Venatici, an edge-on spiral with a slightly distorted wedge shape that gives it the appearance of a whale. The apparent dimensions are 15.5 X 2.7 arcminutes and the apparent magnitude is 9.8. The nearby companion galaxy (the Pup) is the dwarf elliptical NGC 4627. The estimated distance of the Whale galaxy ranges between 25 and 30 million light years.

Integration on this image was 24 X 600 seconds for luminance and 9 X 600 seconds for each colored filter.

The final image for this month is one that really touches on some of points that I opened with about imaging these galaxies. NGC 3718, also called Arp 214, is a fascinating galaxy that astronomers argued over for some time. Some thought it was a lenticular galaxy while others said it was a spiral. It is now generally accepted that this is a warped spiral galaxy. Its spiral arms look twisted and extended with young blue star clusters at each tip. It is no doubt twisted due to interacting with another large spiral, NGC 3729, seen just to its right. NGC 3729 is a mere 150 thousand light years away from NGC 3718. While these galaxies in the constellation Ursa Major are at an astonishing distance of about 52 million light years away, there's even some more remarkable subjects in this image. Just above NGC 3718 is Hickson Group 56, a grouping of five interacting galaxies that lie over 400 million light years away. For perspective on this, the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago after living on the Earth for about 165 million years. So the light I collected left those galaxies roughly 200 million years before the dinosaurs even came into existence.

The image was captured with all the previously mentioned equipment. I used 36 luminance subs of 600 seconds each and the RGB was 12 X 600 seconds for each colored filter.

I hope that everyone gets a chance this Spring to get out and see some of these amazing galaxies that are in our night sky this time of year. Whether I'm seeing these on my computer screen while processing the images or looking through an eyepiece, I am always amazed by the beauty and the wonder of these galaxies.

Have a nice Spring and clear skies from Little Piney Observatory!