M95, M96, M105 and a myriad other galaxies in Leo

[gorann]

After I was done with some dark nebulosity around midnight on Saturday I let the RASA do some galaxy hunting while I went to sleep. This is what it found.

Apart from the Messier galaxies I count seven NGC galaxies in the image. Then there is a myriad of smaller ones that I assume may have PGC or UGC numbers. I post the plate solve from Astrobin so you can see the M and NGC designations.

In contrast to the IFN infested area around M81 and M82 that I recently imaged, this area seems virtually free from such intragalactic stuff.

Collected 14 Feb with the RASA 8 and ASI2600MC without filters. 56 x 4 min at gain 100, so 3.7 hours.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 17, 2021 by gorann

[Spongey]

Fantastic image! 

I hope you don't mind but I ran the JPEG through PixInsight's image solver and annotator, which has shown that yes, you caught a fair few PGC galaxies too! 😅

The way to do this is to solve the image in PixInsight using the ImageSolver script, and then run the AnnotateImage script with whatever objects you wish to highlight.

Cheers

[gorann]

26 minutes ago, Spongey said:

Fantastic image! 

I hope you don't mind but I ran the JPEG through PixInsight's image solver and annotator, which has shown that yes, you caught a fair few PGC galaxies too! 😅

The way to do this is to solve the image in PixInsight using the ImageSolver script, and then run the AnnotateImage script with whatever objects you wish to highlight.

 

Cheers

Thanks Spongey for providing this! Amazing amount of PGCs! I do know how to do it in PI but got lazy🥴

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Fantastic image. I am really tempted to get such a photon hoover. At a similar focal length my scope is F/4.8, so 5.76x less light hitting the sensor, requiring 21.3 hours to get the same amount of light. Ouch!

[gorann]

Thanks Michael! I have an Esprit 100 with the same focal length and yes it is a quite different scope than the RASA light bucket. But it does a great job in my dual Esprit rig to collect RGB with an Esprit 150 for the luminance.