Occasionally referred to as a galactic Eye of Sauron, NGC 4151 is a Seyfert Galaxy housing one of the most active supermassive black holes in our neighborhood. Actually, a binary black hole is thought to be at the core, one of 40 million solar masses and the other 10 million. They are believed to orbit each other every 15.8 years, but there is still some controversy regarding their existence. Its distance historically has been measured to be close to 40 million light years. However, in 2014 a team using a clever technique called Echo Mapping, discovered the galaxy to be closer to 62 million. Its neighbor directly above it in the image, NGC 4156, is 260 Mly distant and has a tidal tail. To it’s right is UGC 7188, some 322 Mly from earth. There are three major galaxy clusters in this image. One of them, XMMXCS J1208.4+3928 is located in the lower left of the image and has a Z value of .220 which translates roughly to 3.7 Gly Note a tidal element directly below NGC 4151.

With the hope of not burning out the core, I decided to try both 600 and 120 second subframes, using the later for the core. Total imaging time was 34.4 hours.

During the challenging events of this past year I have had time to pause and consider things that matter most. I am grateful for the gift of our Creators Cosmos that surrounds us. Reminding me of God’s power and love for us. Mark Twain once invited us to consider our earth as a single drop of water in a beautiful storm of beauty that we are part of…

“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty”

(Travels in Alaska, John Muir, 1915, Chap 1, p.5)

Image Acquisition info:

Location: Starlodge Observatory

Date: April 2020

Scope: AstroTech 16, Ritchey Chretien

Camera: Atik 16200

LRGBHa:

L 120s 58 6960

600s 82 49200

R 120s 23 2760

600s 24 14400

G 120s 24 2880

600s 28 16800

B 120s 24 2880

600s 27 16200

Ha 900s 13 11700

123,780/3600=34.4 hrs