NGC 4535 & NGC 4526

[Davide Simonetti]

A lovely clear night revealed two new objects (well, new to me anyway - they are in fact ancient ). On the left of the image is NGC 4535 (also known as McLeish's Object according to Stellarium), a barred spiral galaxy located some 54 million light years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.  On the right of the image is NGC 4526 (according to Stellarium it is also known as the Lost Galaxy), a lenticular galaxy in the Virgo constellation that is seen nearly edge-on. 

These two objects were chosen more or less at random while searching around in Stellarium for an interesting target to image. I really wasn't expecting NGC 4535 to resolve at all, hardly anything of it was visible in the subs so I was very pleasantly surprised to see its beautiful spiral arms come out so clearly. At 54 million light years from Earth it's the most distant object I've imaged to date and it needed the 2 hours and 40 minutes of exposure it was given.

20 x 8 minute exposures at 400 ISO
11 x dark frames
10 x flat frames
21 x bias/offset frames (subtracted from flat frames only)

Captured with APT
Guided with PHD
Processed in Nebulosity and Photoshop

Equipment:
Celestron NexStar 127 SLT
GoTo AltAz mount with homemade wedge
Orion 50mm Mini Guide Scope
ZWO ASI120 MC imaging and guiding camera
Canon 700D DSLR

[laudropb]

Very nice wide field image.