Messier 77 or NGC1068 or Arp 37 or... The Squid Galaxy? (Michael Feigenbaum)

Messier 77 or NGC1068 or Arp 37 or... The Squid Galaxy?

Here we have my attempt at M77. This is a very interesting barred spiral located about 47 million light years away in Cetus. This is a galaxy with an Active Galactic Nucleus with a huge central black hole whose mass is thought to be about 15 million times that of our sun. It is further classified as a Type 2 Seyfert galaxy and is one of the closest of this type to us. The diameter of this is about 170,000 light years which I believe includes the outer ring structure. To me, an unusual and interesting subject indeed. But I will say the name "Squid Galaxy" makes no sense to me whatsoever, lol... (the foregoing paraphrased from Wikipedia entry).

With this image and my immediately prior image, I am trying to do longer exposures to get a little more depth. I had always worried about blowing out stars but have found that within reason, longer exposures will not necessarily have that undesired outcome. With my skies (Bortle 4.5 or so) I believe I can go longer and will be attempting to do that if we ever get a clear night again here in Arizona... it's been uncharacteristically bad.

I also tried to incorporate some Ha integration to try to bring out some of the HII regions I know exist but could not really resolve them as I had hoped. But this is a rather small object at about 7' x 6' and with my equipment, I think I've done just OK. Perhaps a lot more integration in Ha would help but if one cannot get the weather to cooperate, what can one do?

In any case, I am somewhat pleased with the result and like all my projects I think I have learned some things that will hopefully help in future projects.

I hope you like this and I wish you all Season's Greetings!

Final
Original
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Title: Monochrome version

Uploaded: ...

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Title: M77 Cropped

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5340998
PixInsight job	I9YZGF6Q8KGNOBNPDUZOHDIQU0Q3YSQT
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	02h42m41s.14
RA (top/left)	02h43m27s.57
RA (top/right)	02h43m34s.74
RA (bottom/right)	02h41m54s.67
RA (bottom/left)	02h41m47s.50

Dec (center)	-00°00′51″.1
Dec (top/left)	-00°20′33″.7
Dec (top/right)	+00°17′41″.8
Dec (bottom/right)	+00°18′52″.7
Dec (bottom/left)	-00°19′23″.8

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