Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  M 100  ·  NGC 4312  ·  NGC 4321  ·  NGC 4322  ·  NGC 4323  ·  NGC 4328
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The Blow Dryer Galaxy - M100, James Hawks
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The Blow Dryer Galaxy - M100

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
The Blow Dryer Galaxy - M100, James Hawks
Powered byPixInsight

The Blow Dryer Galaxy - M100

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Messier 100, aka The Blow Dryer Galaxy, is ~55 million light years away. It is a grand design intermediate spiral galaxy in the Coma Berenices. It is one of the brightest and largest galaxies in the Virgo Cluster and it was one of the first spiral galaxies to be discovered.

This unguided image was captured, in a Queen Creek (Arizona) Bortle 7 backyard, using a Celestron EdgeHD 11" telescope with a 0.7x focal reducer. The telescope is mounted on a 10Micron GM2000 HPS II mount. The camera is a ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro using a Astodon OSC UV-IR Cut filter and an Optolong L-Enhance filter. The image is comprised of 200 200 second exposures and 100 300 second exposures. It was captured over 7 nights (4-4-2022 to 4-23-2022). The images were stacked/processed in Pixinsight and fine-tuning done in Photoshop.

Acquisition:
    Location: Queen Creek, AZ Bortle 7
    Dates: 2022-04-04 to 2022-04-23
    Lights (Dithered, Cooled 0°C, Gain 100):
        200 x 200s (UV-IR)
        100 x 300s (L-Enhance)
    Darks: 25
    Flats: 25
    Dark Flats: 25

Hardware:
    Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC PRO
    Scope: Celestron EdgeHD 11"
    Focal Reducer: Celestron 0.7x
    Focuser: Prodigy Microfocuser
    Guide Camera: Unguided
    Guide Scope: Unguided
    Mount: GM2000 HPS II
    Filter: Astrodon OSC UV-IR Cut

Software:
    SGP
    Pixinsight
    Photoshop

Processing:
    Repeated separately for UV-IR and L-Enhance
        Stacked in Pixinsight (WBPP, Separate RGB, SubframeSelector, ImageIntegration)
        Pixinsight (ChannelCombination, DCrop, ABE, EZDenoise, MaskedStretch, StarNet2)
    Extract HA from L-Enhance mix with Main RGB Image
    AstroFlat Pro in Photoshop
    Camera Raw Filter in Photoshop
    Color/Levels Adjustments

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The Blow Dryer Galaxy - M100, James Hawks

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