M63 - The Sunflower Galaxy (Alan Howell)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: M 63 · NGC 5055 · Sunflower Galaxy

M63 - The Sunflower Galaxy

Link: https://www.starpathimages.com/Photography/Astrophotography/

M63 - The Sunflower Galaxy

Link: https://www.starpathimages.com/Photography/Astrophotography/

I had tried this galaxy before at a lower focal length but it just wasn't working out from my Bortle 6 location. I decided to put the 8" Edge HD on it during a very clear night of 'above average' conditions before the Moon rose over my tree line. For only 7hrs of exposure time I thought this came out fairly nice. I'll add more data to bring out the sharper details but this version gives me a nice view of M63 so far.

Captured with an 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, using an RGB filter and a ZWO strain-wave gear equatorial tracking mount.
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Messier 63 or M63, also known as NGC 5055, or the Sunflower Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici with approximately 400 billion stars. The distance to M63, based upon the luminosity-distance measurement is 29.3 million light-years (8.99 megaparsecs). A symmetric, two-arm spiral structure wraps 150° around the galaxy and extends out to 13,000 light-years (4,000 parsecs) from the nucleus. There is speculation a supermassive black hole of 850 million times the mass of our Sun may reside at the center of the galaxy.

M63 was first discovered by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain, then later verified by his colleague Charles Messier on June 14, 1779. The galaxy became listed as object 63 in the Messier Catalogue. In the mid-19th century, Anglo-Irish astronomer Lord Rosse identified spiral structures within the galaxy, making this one of the first galaxies in which such structure was identified. The best time to observe M63 is during May.

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