Messier 64 - The Black Eye Galaxy - is a famous and well-known Spiral Galaxy that is located 17 million light-years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices. It has prominent dust lanes to one side of the galaxy which is responsible for its common name.
I first shot M64 in May of 2020 and I wanted to try it again. I used the same exact scope - a Williams Optics 132 mm FLT APO. For the image in 2020, I used a ZWO ASI294MC-Pro OSC camera. That version of the image can be seen here:
https://cosgrovescosmos.com/projects/m64-black-eye-galaxyFor this one, I used the ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro Mono camera.
This was shot over 3 evenings on the nights of 5-29-22, 5-30-22, and 5-31-22.
The first night was kind of a fiasco and all I ended up with was 2 subs that were usable! That must be some kind of record! But things went well the other two nights before our clear streak ended, and I collected a total of 2.6 hours of useful subs.
Processing on the 2020 attempt with done with an older version of my brain that was still learning Pixinsight. This version of the image was processed with a newer version of my brain - one that has now had two years of Pixinsight experience. Don't get me wrong, I am still learning but I think I am in a better place now.
The story of the image and complete processing walk-through can be seen on my website at:
https://cosgrovescosmos.com/projects/messier-64-secondThanks for looking, and let me know if you have any questions!
CS,
Pat
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