Hi Folks,
A new imaging project has been published on my website!
"Messier 102 - The Spindle Galaxy - 2 hours in LRGB - Still Shooting Though the Smoke!"
Messier 102, also known as NGC 5866 and the Spindle Galaxy, is located 50 Million light-years away in the constellation of Draco.
This target is not shot as often as many others, but I was intrigued by the fact that there is a dark dust lane bisecting this lenticular galaxy. I saw a wonderful shot of this target taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and I am always curious as to how much of the detail revealed there I can show with my own images. So I decided to give this one a try despite the challenging conditions.
This is another target that was shot on May 24th, when the smoke plume from the Alberta Wildfires was pushed south of us by the Jet Stream. We had two nights that were relatively clear of smoke, and during this time, I shot several targets. All of them ended up being starved for integration time and had to shoot through residual smoke that was still in the atmosphere.
These have become a challenge to make the best image you can with data that is very limited.
The resulting image is not great, but if you zoom in on the galaxy, you can see the dark dust lane quite clearly, and hints of the other details shown in the Hubble image.
for comparison, here is the Hubble Image:
The full story behind this imaging project, along with a detailed, step-by-step processing walkthrough, can be seen here:
https://cosgrovescosmos.com/projects/m102Thanks for looking!
Pat
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