Messier61.jpg

It has been pretty much cloudy with occasional rain here in Atlanta, GA for the past week.

So, I have decided to start working on building a radio astronomy telescope with a 1.5m dish. My project will not make a dent in the field of radio astronomy, but it should yield some radio observations of the sun during cloudy days and maybe I will figure out in the future how to link several more dishes up to listen to faint DSOs.

The image displayed here is of the galaxy NGC 4303 (center), a member of the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies.  NGC 4303 lies 55 million light years away from our planet and carries a designation of Messier 61.

If you look to the upper left, you will notice NGC 4292 – Lenticular galaxy, and to the lower left of Messier 61, lies the galaxy NGC 4301. There are multiple other galaxies present in the image, some very faint due to the light pollution (no LPO filter was used), this was a quick captured snapshot.

The imaging train used was a 6.5” APO refractor at F/7 and a CMOS ASI2600 OSC used with 47 minutes of exposure time.
Hopefully, the rain will clear soon.

Clear skies!