M94, art thou a bullseye? (Nay, a croc's) (Ian Dixon)

M94, art thou a bullseye? (Nay, a croc's)

Revision title: M94 - corrected the histogram to coordinate the RGB peaks

M94

Messier 94 (NGC 4736) is a spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici, and one of the nearest beyond our Local Group of Galaxies. M 94 was catalogued by Charles Messier in the late 1700's - this is my first image of it.

We visited Sandilands park south near the bustling metropolis of Kerry, MB.

This dark site is located on an ancient escarpment at an elevation of 450 metres. The weather is much dryer and cooler than the surrounding prairie plains. Crisscrossed with logging roads and quad trails, this is a perfect place to image.

Materials:
120 mm triplet refractor
GTO 900 Astrophysics mount
Good old trusty high QE 2600 mc pro camera (much love for this one)
ASI Air Pro Raspberry Pi on board processor

Methods:
42 x 120 sec exposures (84 min integration)
20 flats
20 bias
10 darks
Pixinsight to stack and calibrate and most processing
APP for some processing

The gang:
Some gang members were missing (two Kevins - G and W)
Thanks to Dave Moug, Ryan W, and Kevin Black.

M94 features
- bright core, blazing nucleus
- surrounded by an elongated, diffuse disk
- knots on the sides suggest a spiral
- super tight spiral arms
- young, blue star clusters are seen near the centre
- separate, fainter population of an older, yellowish stars

Thanks for looking!

B

Title: Some penultimate noise reduction applied.

Uploaded: ...

C

Title: Too much tweaking?

Uploaded: ...

D

Title: An early, noiser version.

Uploaded: ...

E

Title: The location - far from the madding crowd - no ignoble strife here! (Thanks to Kevin B for the image)

Uploaded: ...

F

Title: Ian's mobile astrophotography rig spring 2022

Uploaded: ...

G

Title: M94 - corrected the histogram to coordinate the RGB peaks

Description: I reintroduced the stars to native configuration and fixed the colour.

Uploaded: ...

Cooled Color Cams
ZWO ASI 2600MC PRO
AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum
The refractors!
CMOS Imagers
Cloudy Nights
ZWO ASIAIR PRO USERS
Canadian Astrophotography
Skywatcher Esprit ED Super APO Triplet
Messier Objects

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Unknown

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5848828
PixInsight job	LM80T2MA9DU4639ZXXIG9KXAEX759THX
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	12h50m43s.455
RA (top/left)	12h49m38s.783
RA (top/right)	12h48m05s.215
RA (bottom/right)	12h51m46s.793
RA (bottom/left)	12h53m23s.804

Dec (center)	+41°03′29″.77
Dec (top/left)	+41°40′25″.93
Dec (top/right)	+40°38′50″.46
Dec (bottom/right)	+40°26′37″.67
Dec (bottom/left)	+41°27′56″.55

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