Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Pisces (Psc)  ·  Contains:  KX 257  ·  M 74  ·  MQ J013543.84+153818.1  ·  MQ J013612.34+154519.8  ·  MQ J013612.45+155239.7  ·  MQ J013615.30+154341.7  ·  MQ J013622.26+160514.6  ·  MQ J013627.74+154753.5  ·  MQ J013636.21+154557.4  ·  MQ J013637.70+154740.6  ·  MQ J013642.66+154418.5  ·  MQ J013647.14+155744.8  ·  MQ J013648.51+154259.7  ·  MQ J013650.87+155331.7  ·  MQ J013651.10+154546.3  ·  MQ J013657.31+153702.3  ·  MQ J013659.14+155525.0  ·  MQ J013659.61+154015.6  ·  MQ J013700.10+154516.9  ·  MQ J013704.24+155041.7  ·  MQ J013713.59+153515.4  ·  MQ J013713.86+154916.9  ·  MQ J013729.23+154612.4  ·  MQ J013742.19+154350.9  ·  MQ J013806.96+153155.3  ·  MQ J013810.14+150153.7  ·  NGC 628  ·  PGC 138402  ·  PGC 138404  ·  PGC 138405  ·  And 214 more.
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M74 the Phantom Galaxy, John Favalessa
M74 the Phantom Galaxy, John Favalessa

M74 the Phantom Galaxy

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M74 the Phantom Galaxy, John Favalessa
M74 the Phantom Galaxy, John Favalessa

M74 the Phantom Galaxy

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Description

I can only see a couple of handfuls of stars from my B7 backyard…even with my glasses on 🤓😂.   I am astonished, even after doing astrophotography for 3 years now, that I’m able to capture detail and color on a faint object 32 MLYs away!  Little photons, traveling so far and for so long, end their journey hitting a pixel on my sensor.  Astonishing.

Messier 74 (NGC 628) is also called the Phantom Galaxy because the surface brightness is very low, in fact the second lowest of the Messier objects.  Do you know what the lowest is?   I read that, “The low surface brightness is due to the fact that the galaxy lies almost face-on to Earth”.  I must think about why that means low brightness.  Any thoughts on that?   In my Messier objects chart, M74 is in the “Very Hard” column.  Astonishing.   My 102GT at 706mm and the ASI2600 with 3.76nm pixels results in essentially perfect pixel scale resulting in the best resolution I can get with the 102.

From Wikipedia:  Its relatively large angular (that is, apparent) size and the galaxy's face-on orientation make it an ideal object for professional astronomers who want to study spiral arm structure and spiral density waves.  It is estimated that M74 hosts about 100 billion stars.

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M74 the Phantom Galaxy, John Favalessa