Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  M 100  ·  NGC 4312  ·  NGC 4321  ·  NGC 4323  ·  NGC 4328
M100 Blowdryer Galaxy, Joe Niemeyer
M100 Blowdryer Galaxy
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M100 Blowdryer Galaxy

M100 Blowdryer Galaxy, Joe Niemeyer
M100 Blowdryer Galaxy
Powered byPixInsight

M100 Blowdryer Galaxy

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Description

This is an outlying galaxy in the Virgo Cluster called the Blowdryer Galaxy (M100). This beautiful target is referred to as a grand design intermediate spiral galaxy. These spirals are my favorite because you can see lots of detail in their arms. The Blowdryer Galaxy sits 56 Million light-years from Earth and is very faint at magnitude 9.5, hence difficult to image. Like the Milky Way, M100 has small companion galaxies, NGC 4328 above and NGC 4323 to the right. NGC 4323 is connected to M100 by a thin bridge of luminous matter and is tugging the adjacent spiral arm out of place. This image also captures galaxy NGC 4312 to the far left and tiny little galaxy IC 783 low and left of center.

This image is a cropped stack of thirty 300-second exposures at 2310mm focal length and relatively high gain, then calibrated with 20 each dark, flat, and dark flat frames, post-processed with StarNet++ and Photoshop.

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M100 Blowdryer Galaxy, Joe Niemeyer