Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Virgo (Vir)  ·  Contains:  M 58  ·  NGC 4579
M58 Barred Spiral Galaxy, Joe Niemeyer
M58 Barred Spiral Galaxy
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M58 Barred Spiral Galaxy

M58 Barred Spiral Galaxy, Joe Niemeyer
M58 Barred Spiral Galaxy
Powered byPixInsight

M58 Barred Spiral Galaxy

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Description

It's probably kind of nuts but I keep trying to stretch the limits of how far and how faint of a deep sky object I can image. This latest attempt is a barred spiral galaxy called M58. These kinds of galaxies are somewhat rare and there are only 3 other barred spirals in the Messier catalog. The poor thing doesn't have a fancy name, so maybe you can suggest one. M58 is located 68 million light-years from Earth and is a very dim magnitude 10.5. I like how you can clearly see the bar structure at the center of the galaxy. It also has a supermassive black hole at its center with a mass of about 70 million solar masses. I could see great clouds of pine pollen flying through the air when my headlamp was turned on, so that may have detracted from this image. It's always something!

This image is from a stack of twenty-four 300-second exposures at 2310mm focal length, calibrated with 20 each dark, flat, and dark flat frames, then post-processed with StarNet++ and Photoshop.

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M58 Barred Spiral Galaxy, Joe Niemeyer