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Astrophotography by Bob Franke

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M106

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      Click the full screen zoom button           ^
     
Click the image to Zoom and Pan              

Click here to view the image without Zoomify (2700 x 1800, 1.18 MB)

 

Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) 0.64 arcsec / pixel.  The Zoomify image scale is 0.85 to 2.87 arcsec / pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ internal filter wheel, AstroDon G1 Filters

Acquisition Date

4/01/2009 to 5/13/2009  Chino Valley, AZ

Exposure

 Lum 405 min (27 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

RGB

405 min (  9 x 15 min each, bin 1x1)

 Ha

900 min (30 x 30 min each, bin 1x1)

Software

  • CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS6, PixInsight and Noel Carboni's actions.

  • eXcalibrator v4.1 for (g-r) color balancing, using 22 stars from the SDSS-DR9 database.

  • CCDBand-Aid to repair STL-11000M vertical bars.

  • CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject, combine the sub exposures and to create the RGB image.

  • PixInsight for gradient removal and initial non-linear stretching.

  • PhotoShop for the LRGB combine & final touch-up. 

  • Noiseware 5, a PhotoShop plug-in.

Comment

North is ~ to the top... the image is rotated 21 Deg's to the right.

Discovered by Pierre Méchain, in 1781, Messier 106 (also known as NGC 4258) is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. M106 is at a distance of about 23 million light-years from Earth. It is also a Seyfert II galaxy, which means that due to x-rays and unusual emission lines detected, it is suspected that part of the galaxy is falling into a supermassive black hole in the center.

NGC 4248, to the right, at a distance of about 21 million light-years is a possible companion galaxy.