M63 "Sunflower" Galaxy (The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Robotic Telescope) (Mark Germani)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: M 63 · NGC 5055 · Sunflower Galaxy

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M63 "Sunflower" Galaxy (The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Robotic Telescope)

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M63 "Sunflower" Galaxy (The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Robotic Telescope)

M63, the "Sunflower" galaxy, is a spiral galaxy - and the first flocculent spiral I've ever processed. In Accurate Distances to Important Spiral Galaxies: M63, M74, NGC 1291, NGC 4559, NGC 4625, and NGC 5398 (K. McQuinn et. al., 2017) its distance is calculated at 29.74Mly (±0.02 ±0.07). The arms are not clearly contiguous in the visible spectrum, and would benefit from a closer look by JWST - here's hoping!

The data for this galaxy was provided by the RASC Robotic Telescope, and was imaged in June of 2021. The galaxy itself was near the edge of the frame, and required a very tight crop to centre it. Dozens of dust-donuts did not calibrate out, so I created a mask in Photoshop which I brought into PixInsight and used along with Curves Transformation to remove the donuts for each channel in linear form, before combining and stretching. Many thanks to RASC for the data!

REFERENCES

K. McQuinn, E. Skillman, A. Dolphin, D. Berg, and R. Kennicutt (2017). Accurate Distances to Important Spiral Galaxies: M63, M74, NGC 1291, NGC 4559, NGC 4625, and NGC 5398. The Astronomical Journey of the American Astronomical Society, Volume 154, Number 2, July 2017, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/aa7aad

Messier 63 (The Sunflower Galaxy) - NASA Science. SMD Content Editors, June 27, 2022. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night-sky/hubble-messier-catalog/messier-63/

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Robotic Telescope

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9017068
PixInsight job	LH1WU1Y0I0GRN7T010KN8XVJQ6T76GYC
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h15m48s.69
RA (top/left)	13h16m52s.49
RA (top/right)	13h14m49s.72
RA (bottom/right)	13h14m45s.12
RA (bottom/left)	13h16m47s.16

Dec (center)	+42°01′57″.3
Dec (top/left)	+42°12′51″.6
Dec (top/right)	+42°13′47″.3
Dec (bottom/right)	+41°51′00″.2
Dec (bottom/left)	+41°50′05″.8

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M63 "Sunflower" Galaxy (The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Robotic Telescope)

M63 "Sunflower" Galaxy (The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Robotic Telescope)

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M63 "Sunflower" Galaxy (The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Robotic Telescope)

M63 "Sunflower" Galaxy (The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Robotic Telescope)

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