Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  35 Com  ·  Black Eye Galaxy  ·  Black-eye galaxy  ·  Evil Eye Galaxy  ·  HD111542  ·  HD112196  ·  HD112197  ·  HD112354  ·  HD112735  ·  HD112755  ·  HD112974  ·  HD113170  ·  HD113269  ·  HD113365  ·  IC 3866  ·  IC 3917  ·  M 64  ·  NGC 4826  ·  The star 35 Com
M64 and the elusive Double Flare Nebula, Mau_Bard
M64 and the elusive Double Flare Nebula, Mau_Bard

M64 and the elusive Double Flare Nebula

Revision title: v2

M64 and the elusive Double Flare Nebula, Mau_Bard
M64 and the elusive Double Flare Nebula, Mau_Bard

M64 and the elusive Double Flare Nebula

Revision title: v2

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

I have been chasing for a while the faint portion of IFN living just south of M64, that is sometimes named Double Flare Nebula. It is an extremely elusive one, to the point that it was not appearing on the first attempt of recording it that I made in last February. Even with the 12:50 hours of exposure invested here, it emerged only after a few processing steps.

Pre-processing such a large number of sub-exposures (nearly 400) with PixInsight proved to be a challenge with my PC, that is mounting 16GB of working memory. At the end it worked. Modern processing requires 32-64 GB RAM and large number of cores (plus a CUDA capable GPU!). Probably this will be my next investment.

Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN)
Integrated flux nebulae have been discovered at the beginning of years 2000. The astronomer Steve Mandel was one of the major contributors to their definition.
These are nebulae that are laying mostly out of the galaxy plane and are illuminated by the integrated flux of all the stars in the Milky Way, hence their name. For this reason they are extremely faint, and mostly visible in the direction of the galactic poles, as is it the case here.
These nebulae are made up by dust, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and other elements.

M64  
The Black Eye Galaxy or NGC 4826 is a relatively isolated spiral galaxy 17 million light-years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices, pretty close to North Galactic Pole. It was discovered by Edward Pigott in March 1779, and soon after independently by Johann Elert Bode and by Charles Messier. A dark band of absorbing dust partially in front of its bright nucleus gave rise to its nicknames of the "Black Eye".
M64 is a type 2 Seyfert galaxy with an HII/LINER nucleus.
The interstellar medium of Messier 64 consists of two counter-rotating disks that are approximately equal in mass. The inner disk contains the prominent dust lanes of the galaxy. The stellar population of the galaxy exhibits no measurable counter-rotation. Possible formation scenarios include a merger with a gas-rich satellite galaxy in a retrograde orbit, or the continued accretion of gas clouds from the intergalactic medium. It has a diameter of 53800 light-years.

Comments