Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  M 108  ·  M 97  ·  NGC 3556  ·  NGC 3587  ·  Owl Nebula
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M97/M108 - the 'owl and the pussy cat?', Tom Gray
M97/M108 - the 'owl and the pussy cat?'
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M97/M108 - the 'owl and the pussy cat?'

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M97/M108 - the 'owl and the pussy cat?', Tom Gray
M97/M108 - the 'owl and the pussy cat?'
Powered byPixInsight

M97/M108 - the 'owl and the pussy cat?'

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Description

M97 and M108 make an interesting pair - my rather ‘cartoonish’ owl looks on, to what might be best described as some form of ‘roadkill’! In truth, M97 is a planetary nebula, puffed off the central star (just visible between the eyes) around 8000 years ago, and expanding ~30km/s. M108 is a barred spiral galaxy, some 45m LY from earth, with a diameter over 100,000 LY. Very little detail, beyond some mottling is visible in my ‘squashed’ image.

Despite a promising start - an hour of data (5m subs) through my narrowband filter, was supplemented with RGB (120s subs) through increasing haze and cold. I have struggled again with excessive noise and gradients and the resultant data has been severely clipped to boost contrast.

Definitely not my best effort, but deserves to be recorded, if not shared.

Comments

Revisions

  • M97/M108 - the 'owl and the pussy cat?', Tom Gray
    Original
  • Final
    M97/M108 - the 'owl and the pussy cat?', Tom Gray
    B
  • M97/M108 - the 'owl and the pussy cat?', Tom Gray
    C

B

Description: Processed in Nebulosity with non-linear transformation to darken background - I’m not sure this is any better.

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: My final effort, uses data from my NBF applied equally to G and B channels, but introducing more noise in the process. I expect my tri/quad band L-eNhance filter may be in part the cause of this. It is of course designed for use with OSC, and therefore introduces excessive, and noisy OIII data. One day I’ll get myself a set of individual narrowband filters...

Uploaded: ...

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

M97/M108 - the 'owl and the pussy cat?', Tom Gray