Galaxies in Coma Berenice

[wimvb]

Ngc 4725, ngc 4747 and ngc 4712 are three galaxies in Coma Berenice. The larger of these (ngc 4725) is a Seyfert 2 galaxy, located about 38 - 50 million light years away. This galaxy is about the same size as the Andromeda galaxy. Equally far away is its companion ngc 4747 which shows signs of a violent past. The smaller galaxy ngc 4712 is not bound to the former two. This is an emission line galaxy, some 200 million light years from us.

If you draw a horizontal line from ngc 4747 and a vertical line from ngc 4712, at the intersection of these lines is galaxy 2MASX J12494045+2546186, at about the same distance as ngc 4725. Half way between this small galaxy and ngc 4725 lies a galaxy cluster. Its largest member LEDA 1745311 (just a small reddish smudge in this image) is at a distance of 2.4 Billion light years and is roughly the same size as the largest galaxy in this image (ngc 4725).

Data for this image was collected last April with my Skywatcher 190MN and ZWO ASI294MM. Total integration time was about 5.5 hours.

[gorann]

Great image Wim and interesting info. I had a go at the same galaxies two years ago with my Esprit 150 and about the same integration time and the result was very similar to yours, so the MN190 is at least performing like a 6" refractor but at a much more reasonable cost.

https://www.astrobin.com/394768/L/

[wimvb]

Glad you like it, Göran. It seems to me you got more detail in the main galaxy. I had to throw out a large numer of subs due to poor guiding. In the end I decided to create a synthetic luminance image from the combined LRGB data, excluding everything with too large FWHM and eccentricity, and setting a weight on every sub based on FWHM and eccentricity. Today I will recollimate my Mak-Newt. Something you won't need to do with a refractor.

[gorann]

15 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Glad you like it, Göran. It seems to me you got more detail in the main galaxy. I had to throw out a large numer of subs due to poor guiding. In the end I decided to create a synthetic luminance image from the combined LRGB data, excluding everything with too large FWHM and eccentricity, and setting a weight on every sub based on FWHM and eccentricity. Today I will recollimate my Mak-Newt. Something you won't need to do with a refractor.

So maybe a few more details in my image is more related to my Mesu mount😉

[Chris]

Impressive fine details in the 3 main Coma Berenice galaxies, and nice rich velvety background sky, what's not to love

[wimvb]

Thanks, @Chris. This one came out good, despite the lack of Luminance data. Glad you like it.