M64, the Black Eye galaxy, was discovered by Edward Pigott in March 1779 and independently by Johann Elert Bode in April of the same year, as well as by Charles Messier the next year. It is located about 17 million light years from Earth and has a diameter of 53,800 light years. Its bright core is partially obscured by dust, giving it very recognizable black eye.
The galaxy has an unusual internal motion, with the gas in the outer regions rotating in the opposite direction from the inner regions, most likely due to a merger with a satellite galaxy over a billion years ago. The regions where the oppositely rotating gases collide are star forming [1,2].
The dust lanes in the core can just be made out in the original image and I wanted to bring these out. Image C was made by halving the pixel scale using Topas Gigapixel AI, gently sharpening that image with Topas Sharpen AI and finally cropping. The initial use of Gigapixel is critical; there are no obvious artefacts in the core in C but applying the same sharpening to the original image led to clear problems.
[1]
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night-sky/hubble-messier-catalog/messier-64/[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Eye_Galaxy
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