Messier 108 - The "Surfboard" Galaxy (Cosgrove's Cosmos (Patrick Cosgrove))

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa) · Contains: M 108 · NGC 3556

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Messier 108 - The "Surfboard" Galaxy

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Messier 108 - The "Surfboard" Galaxy

Messier 108, also known as NGC 3556 and the "Surfboard Galaxy", is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation of Ursa Major and is 45.9 Million Light years away. M108 is about 110,00 light years across and presents at a angle of 75 degrees from our line of sight. M108 has a massive black hole at its center that is estimated to be 24 million solar masses - about 8 times the size of the black hole at core of our own Milky Way.

Rochester finally gave us a nice clear night on March 7th and I braved the cold to capture 90 subs of 120 seconds ( for a total integration of 3 hours) using my Astro-Physics 130mm F7 APO and he ZWO ASI1600 mono camera.

M108 measures 8.7 by 2.2 arc minutes in angular size, so I had to do some zoom and crop in the final image to bring up the scale a bit - this galaxy would do better with a longer focal length.

Capture Specifics:

30 x 120 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, ZWO Gen II Red Filter

30 x 120 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, ZWO Gen II Green Filter

30 x 120 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C,unity gain, ZWO Gen II Blue Filter

30 Bias exposures

25 Dark exposures

35 R Flats

35 G Flats

35 B Flats

35 Flat Darks

Capture Hardware:

Scope: Astrophysics 130mm Starfire F/8.35 APO refractor

Guide Scope: Televue 76mm Doublet

Guide Scope Focuser: 30 x 120

Camera: ZWO ASI1600mm-pro with ZWO Filter wheel with ZWO filter set

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini

Focus Motor: 30 x 120Camera Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon

Mount: Ioptron CEM60

Polar Alignment: Polemaster camera

Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller

Image Processing: Pixinsight, Photoshop - assisted by Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second guessing, editor regret and much swearing…..

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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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Other
Unknown

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.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4300656
PixInsight job	SLSRJ9ONMNWX6KSS608EGOAQXIPSN4IB
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	11h11m30s.191
RA (top/left)	11h13m57s.580
RA (top/right)	11h10m13s.366
RA (bottom/right)	11h09m03s.595
RA (bottom/left)	11h12m45s.829

Dec (center)	+55°40′24″.81
Dec (top/left)	+55°43′20″.10
Dec (top/right)	+55°58′19″.78
Dec (bottom/right)	+55°37′18″.43
Dec (bottom/left)	+55°22′26″.87

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Messier 108 - The "Surfboard" Galaxy

Messier 108 - The "Surfboard" Galaxy

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Messier 108 - The "Surfboard" Galaxy

Messier 108 - The "Surfboard" Galaxy

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