M63 - A Late Sunflower

[PhotoGav]

M63 - The Sunflower Galaxy

 

Messier 63 - The Sunflower Galaxy - is a spiral galaxy about 29 million light years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici. It is part of the M51 Group and is one of the earliest galaxies to be studied in detail. Lord Rosse noted the spiral structure in this galaxy during the mid 19th Century with his 72 inch reflecting telescope 'Leviathan' at around the same time as he was observing the structure in M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy. M63 was the very first discovery of Charles Messier's assistant, Pierre Mechain, who caught it on June 14th 1779. Messier quickly added it to his catalogue of 'objects not to be confused with comets'. The Sunflower Galaxy is a plethora of mysteries to me - there are all sorts of features in there that don't appear 'normal': the tightly wound, grainy, spiral arms around the galactic centre, the two lines of material at right angles to eachother just below the bright star to the right of the galaxy, a small patch of 'nebulosity' a little further out to the right and below the next bright star, the line of dark material that appears to cut across the spiral arms in front of the galaxy. So many oddities that need investigating and explaining! The other thing that I like about this field of view is the large number of tiny faint fuzzies all around the frame, they must be seriously distant!

Technical Details

L = 23 x 1200s
RGB = 18 x 600s each
TOTAL = 16 hrs 40 mins

Celestron EdgeHD 8", QSI 683-WSG8 & Astrodon 31mm Filters, Mesu 200. Processed in APP and PS CC.

It's taken me a while to get around to processing this data set - it was all captured at the end of April and beginning of May. I'm pretty happy with the result. There are a few 'awkward' bright stars that suffer from the Edge 8's inability to treat all wavelengths equally - I've played with the collimation, but that doesn't appear to solve this issue. I am ever more impressed with the Mesu and its ability to steer the 2032mm focal length so steadily, resulting in the sharpest images I've ever taken with the Edge 8". So much better than the HEQ5 ever managed, despite me being very fond of my trusty little HEQ5!

I hope you like the image and I look forward to seeing your comments.

Clear skies!

[souls33k3r]

Like the image? ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE IMAGE!

[Swoop1]

Fab bit of work there. Thanks for sharing!

I wonder if the two lines at right angles are other galaxies behind this showuing through? The lower one looks to have a bright slightly bulging centre, perhaps an edge on spiral?

[Dinglem]

Very nice indeed, such a wonderful image makes me feel I need to get to grips with the art of processing.

[PhotoGav]

1 hour ago, souls33k3r said:

Like the image? ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE IMAGE!

Thank you!

1 hour ago, Swoop1 said:

Fab bit of work there. Thanks for sharing!

I wonder if the two lines at right angles are other galaxies behind this showuing through? The lower one looks to have a bright slightly bulging centre, perhaps an edge on spiral?

Thank you. I guess they could be, though I've looked on Sky Safari and no mention of them. It does show some of the small galaxies towards the bottom of the image, listing them as in the region of 1 to 1.5 billion light years away!

26 minutes ago, Dinglem said:

Very nice indeed, such a wonderful image makes me feel I need to get to grips with the art of processing.

Thank you. Yes, processing is quite possibly the larger half of the story! I am a big fan of Astro Pixel Processor - it does all the donkey work, preparing everything ready for a lot less tweaking in PhotoShop than I used to do.

[tomato]

The galaxy stands up to close  scrutiny, those two lines to the right of the galaxy do look like distant edge on spirals. I’ve looked at M63 in the Cambridge Photographic Atlas of Galaxies, and they are there!  The Atlas image was 345 mins with a SBIG STL-1100 on a 600 mm reflector from Skinakas Observatory in Crete. Although it shows more detail in the dust lanes, your image beats it hands down for showing the fainter outer arms of the galaxy, no doubt due to your impressive total integration time for a UK image. Nice One!

[PhotoGav]

3 hours ago, tomato said:

The galaxy stands up to close  scrutiny, those two lines to the right of the galaxy do look like distant edge on spirals. I’ve looked at M63 in the Cambridge Photographic Atlas of Galaxies, and they are there!  The Atlas image was 345 mins with a SBIG STL-1100 on a 600 mm reflector from Skinakas Observatory in Crete. Although it shows more detail in the dust lanes, your image beats it hands down for showing the fainter outer arms of the galaxy, no doubt due to your impressive total integration time for a UK image. Nice One!

Thank you. That’s interesting about the two galaxies. I will be scouring the catalogues to see what I can find. If I look at them thinking of background galaxies, I can see that they could well be so. However, they look suspiciously elongated to me. 

[tomato]

You are right, the lower one in particular has a very sharp definition, they look similar in the Atlas photo, just fainter.

I suppose they could be some kind of diffraction artefact from the nearby bright star, but why on this subject with two different scopes and cameras?

Anybody got a refractor image with them on?

[Cozzy]

Gav, cracking image nicely processed.

I found this; handy to compair what you actually have in your image. (APOD)

Edited June 26, 2019 by Cozzy

[PhotoGav]

@tomato - they are certainly on all images I have seen of M63. The search continues!

@Cozzy - thank you. Interesting to see the APOD version. It proves that a 17” scope in Dark Sky New Mexico catches more/better photons! 

[tomato]

The APOD image seems to show that the top line could be part of M63 to my eye, but the lower one still looks like the thinnest edge on galaxy I’ve ever seen.

[Xplode]

Nice image Gav!

One of them is definitely a distant edge on galaxy.
I found this taken by Hubble

[MarsG76]

Absolutely fantastic.. 

[PhotoGav]

Thank you @Xplode - yes, that’s very much a galaxy. @tomato - galaxy confirmed!

Thank you @MarsG76 (or are you referring to the APOD image?!?).

[MarsG76]

13 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

Thank you @MarsG76 (or are you referring to the APOD image?!?).

Yours, the APOD image is too Saturated.... your image has that softfocus glow to it and its color levels are just right.. your look realistic/photographic and the APOD image looks like a cartoon....

Edited June 26, 2019 by MarsG76

[ollypenrice]

Nice natural job on this one.

Olly

[PhotoGav]

Thank you @MarsG76 & @ollypenrice - the natural look is what I am always after, so it is particularly pleasing to read your comments!

[MarsG76]

1 hour ago, PhotoGav said:

Thank you @MarsG76 & @ollypenrice - the natural look is what I am always after, so it is particularly pleasing to read your comments!

I say it as I see it IMHO.

[tomato]

14 hours ago, Xplode said:

Nice image Gav!

One of them is definitely a distant edge on galaxy.
I found this taken by Hubble

Wow,  that's a brilliant find! Looks a bit like NGC 891 but a tad more distant no doubt.

I continue to  marvel at the depth and resolving power of the HST, as the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 comes up, the HST Project (it's highs and lows) must be right up there in terms of NASA's greatest achievements.

[rickwayne]

On 25/06/2019 at 12:40, PhotoGav said:

Thank you. Yes, processing is quite possibly the larger half of the story! I am a big fan of Astro Pixel Processor - it does all the donkey work, preparing everything ready for a lot less tweaking in PhotoShop than I used to do.

I'm only a month into my affair with APP but it's pretty torrid, let me tell you. Quite a lovely image, and your questions make it astronomy as well as art.

[PhotoGav]

8 hours ago, rickwayne said:

I'm only a month into my affair with APP but it's pretty torrid, let me tell you. Quite a lovely image, and your questions make it astronomy as well as art.

Thank you @rickwayne . To paraphrase the Prof. Cox: the beauty in scientific images really starts to emerge when you begin to understand what’s going on in them.

As for APP, like all of this astro-gubbins, it has a learning curve. What resources are you using to help yourself along the journey? I am thinking about creating some (simple) guides to using APP and am interested to hear which bits have been the trickiest for you so far. 

[rickwayne]

I started out with Sara Wager's very basic introductory videos. And, in fact, that's all I've needed so far. I haven't explored the settings much, since I've been remarkably content with the results from the "happy path" of default settings. I know Mabula just posted that they're working on simplifying the registration process, which I thought was pretty much "click and go" but what do I know. I actually wouldn't mind a discussion of the various settings on the "integration" tab and when you might want to use them, as well as more on the various image sliders in the right pane. Really I don't think the latter lack for explication, I just haven't internalized it yet.

[tomato]

Last time I looked the help/user’s guide was only half finished, but to be fair there is a separate help guide for the processing element.

The main elements I have found that I need to adjust are those that control smoothing and blending in mosaic panels or images combined from different scopes and cameras. They work really well however, once the optimum settings have been arrived at. That’s the fun in processing I guess.

[PhotoGav]

One of the issues is that there have been all sorts of small changes since a lot of the tutorials were made so buttons aren’t there any more or have changed. All the sliders can be quite mysterious and sometimes pretty subtle in their effect. Thankfully the majority of it works well on the default setting. The one thing that I struggle with sometimes is efficient satellite trail removal. I quite often just exclude subs with trails as they tend to leave a faint remnant whatever settings I use. 

[tomato]

+1 for that, maybe I don’t have the optimum settings, but I too can often find remnants of satellite trails in my APP processed images.