M94: A Peculiar Spiral in Ursa Major (Lilith Gaither)

M94: A Peculiar Spiral in Ursa Major

A peculiar structured galaxy 16 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It has two separate rings, and, while described by some as a barred spiral, appears to have more of an oval shape at the center. This oval center is now thought to be a prototypical pseudobulge.

The inner ring is located toward the center of the galaxy, about 70 arcseconds across. It is located at a site of high star formation and is sometimes referred to as a starburst ring.

Though it may look like it, the outer ring is not a closed stellar ring, but is instead shown to be a complex structure of spiral arms in mid-IR and UV. The outer disk is active, at nearly twice the efficiency per star mass pumping out new stars.

Upon further analysis of galactic rotation, the dark matter content of this galaxy has been found to be very small.

This galaxy is home to beautiful detail which I loved to bring out in subtlety. I feel that the inner spiral structure toward the lower right of the inner disk looked better without being oversharpened. It gives a misty look that I really liked. Around the core, I decided to sharpen a bit more, and boosted the saturation in the bright yellow nucleus. Several smaller, faint galaxies are seen scattered throughout the background.

I was a bit more adventurous with the saturation as a whole in this one because I had a nice balance of star color and wanted to display it. I think it really adds a brilliant overall touch to the image.

The outer ring didn't have a lot of signal, just because of the limiting factor of 256 second subs. I didn't want to crank the gain ridiculously high, so instead worked with what I got. It's a bit noisy, but I think it looks good.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2664893
PixInsight job	QL1G285RRQ964AW6683K23LZWBU94D3S
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	12h50m49s.834
RA (top/left)	12h49m21s.831
RA (top/right)	12h52m19s.708
RA (bottom/right)	12h52m18s.502
RA (bottom/left)	12h49m19s.541

Dec (center)	+41°07′00″.63
Dec (top/left)	+40°55′37″.31
Dec (top/right)	+40°56′08″.31
Dec (bottom/right)	+41°18′18″.19
Dec (bottom/left)	+41°17′48″.43

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