Messier 106 from Coastal Southern California (Roger Webster)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn) · Contains: M 106 · NGC 4248 · NGC 4258

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Messier 106 from Coastal Southern California

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Messier 106 from Coastal Southern California

Messier 106, also known by its popular name, NGC 4258 (attempted "astro-humor"). This is about 22 hours of total imaging time (I had to throw out a bunch of bad frames, more on that below). M106 is about 22 million light-years distant, and is yet another galaxy discovered by Pierre Méchain, this one in 1781; he was a very busy astronomer.

I took this using LRGB filters, and I need a lot more blue -- it got short shrift due to conditions, and I really need double what I have overall, which may or may not happen this year. Speaking of conditions... there were two "interesting" challenges on this one. I originally thought an owl had perched on the scope, causing tracking to get way out of whack, but that wasn't it. Thanks to my friend and former boss, Bruce Waddington, we (he) figured out I have a reflection somewhere in the guts of the guider, which sometimes looks like a star. Since it's a reflection, corrections don't actually correct anything, they just make it worse.

The other challenge happened when I was gathering the luminance data: there was *something* that showed up in the flats I took at the start of the session, and this something *moved* a couple of times during the night. Sigh. I have some cleaning to do, it seems. Still, I'm pleased overall with what I have so far, and since I may not get any more data for a while, I thought I'd post this one now.

From our house, M106 is in the "bright" direction most of the night, which is Bortle 6+ (probably more like 7).

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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	9691956
PixInsight job	KOD4NANMTE3TFJH96YQBT21YCAY00GE5
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	12h18m57s.862
RA (top/left)	12h20m17s.500
RA (top/right)	12h20m23s.222
RA (bottom/right)	12h17m37s.505
RA (bottom/left)	12h17m33s.387

Dec (center)	+47°18′18″.91
Dec (top/left)	+46°56′36″.17
Dec (top/right)	+47°39′22″.64
Dec (bottom/right)	+47°39′58″.77
Dec (bottom/left)	+46°57′11″.16

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Messier 106 from Coastal Southern California

Messier 106 from Coastal Southern California

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Messier 106 from Coastal Southern California

Messier 106 from Coastal Southern California

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