M108

[alan4908]

M108 is a spiral galaxy 46 million light years distant in Ursa Major. It is inclined at 75 degrees from the viewers perspective, so the spiral structure is hidden from view.  Visually it appears as a relatively small object (11.1’ x 4.6’) with an apparent magnitude of 10.7. Its core is estimated to contain a supermassive black hole with an estimated mass of 24 million solar masses.

 I was pleased to capture quite a bit of detail on the galaxy including the Ha emission areas. The background also contains many small, more distant, galaxies.

The LRGB image below was taken with my Esprit 150 and represents 14.5 hours integration time.

Alan

 

M108

M108 (annotated)

LIGHTS: L:34, R:20, G:15, B:18 x 600s; DARKS:30; FLATS:40;BIAS:100 all at -20C.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Lovely image. Wonderful colour and detail

[alan4908]

16 hours ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Lovely image. Wonderful colour and detail

Thanks for the comment Michael. 

Alan

[maw lod qan]

Excellent, and like always thanks for the information you give with the image!

It always amazes me at the number of galaxies you see off in the distance of these images.

Cant help but remember Star Wars.

"In a galaxy, far, far away!"

[alan4908]

22 hours ago, maw lod qan said:

Excellent, and like always thanks for the information you give with the image!

It always amazes me at the number of galaxies you see off in the distance of these images.

Cant help but remember Star Wars.

"In a galaxy, far, far away!"

Thanks - yes, the galaxies, particularly the (annotated) background ones seem to be be particularly distant (c700m light years). 

If you look closely at the image, you can also see that Pixinsight did not pick up all these in the annotated image, maybe these are even further away 

Alan