Last January my friend
Pete invited me to collaborate to a shared imaging project. Pete and two other imagers wanted to capture a very deep image of M106, with the goal of imaging – as clearly as possible – the jets emitted by the active nucleus of this galaxy.
Pete,
Philip,
Andrew and myself collected data from Germany and from the United States, spanning nine time zones. We all have similar scopes and setups. We pooled the data into a cloud service hosted by Philip, then Pete produced the integrated files for each filter, and each of us processed the integration to our taste.
We ended up collecting over 250 hours of data, with the following per-filter breakdown:
L 17.3h
R 7.9h
G 8.3h
B 8.3h
OIII 75.0h
Ha 108.8h
It was amazing to see how deep we went. The anomalous arms produced by the jets are clearly visible in H-alpha and O-III, with their bends and bifurcations. The background sky is littered with faint galaxies.
I feel privileged to have been a part of this project, and grateful that I was invited even though I could only contribute narrowband data from my light-polluted location. The collaboration concept is very powerful, looking forward for more!
Be sure to check out the other imagers’ versions:
Andrew’s –
https://www.astrobin.com/9cxaye/Pete's –
https://www.astrobin.com/2a0fxn/Philip’s –
https://www.astrobin.com/6wue02/
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