M104 Sombrero Galaxy (NGC 4594)
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I did it! My first "real" galaxy. The LMC and the
SMC are just so big and irregular they "don't count", but M1O4? Wow. This
sucker is around 50 million light years away. It is about 140,000 light years
across. Its mass is nearly 1,000 billion suns. For a Canon 350D at prime focus
of a telescope this is a relatively easy target to capture (once you get it into the field
of view - that's the hard part). The field of view for an LXD-75 SN8 is about 1.6
degrees with the Canon 350D. A 20 second exposure will produce a bright (but small)
image on each frame. The galaxy has apparent dimensions of 9x4 arcseconds. The
image here was created by stacking several 20 second exposures and is the actual size
recorded but cropped out of the full sized frame. Aligned in MaxDSLR.
Processed in ImageReady. This image demonstrates why using mirror-lockup is
important. I didn't and you can see the effect if you look closely at the stars in
the larger (linked) image. |
