Messier 106

[RobH]

Hello all.

I'm still bashing away at the rich region of Ursa Major/Canes Venatici at the moment and trying to grab as much as I can before the nights finally get too bright!

M106, in Canes Venatici, is generally classed as an Sb type spiral and as such is similar to M31, as is easily seen here.

There’s a fairly moderate black hole at the centre with a mass of 39 million solar masses which consumes about 1% of a solar mass per year.

I first imaged this with a borrowed OSC camera in April, and took over 40x 6 minute subs, but wasn’t happy with the result, so I started again with a mono camera and filters.

There’s a little Ha added to the red, but only at about 20% opacity, as I wanted to avoid the separate ‘jewels’ of deep red that I’ve had with my previous additions of Ha in various images.

With this image, I’ve tried to keep a ‘natural’ feel…whatever that means!

I started processing 3 days ago, but quickly found that the luminance was degenerating into too much noise in the faint areas when I stretched the image, so managed to grab another hour of data last night, which helped tremendously.

It could still do with more and deeper subs though, especially in the colour channels. The core region is fine but there is some interesting blue in the spiral arms, which I’ve only just hinted at here.

Anyway, it’s been a long road but I’m pretty happy with the final result.

Imaged over several nights in May with my TMB 152 and Atik 16HR.

Luminance. 54 x 6 minutes.

Red. 20 x 3 minutes binned 2x2

Green. 17 x 3 minutes binned 2x2

Blue. 20 x 3 minutes 20 seconds binned 2x2

Ha. 10 x 6 minutes binned 2x2.

Hope you like it

Cheers

Rob

[Hipolito]

Wow ...

Oh, yeah, I like it.

[Tim]

Very nice Rob. As you say, there is some great hues in this one, the rgb cameras really pick up the colours.

[Les Tilly]

Super image Rob thats a one for the wall

Les

[Beyond_Vision]

The detail and colour is superb Rob. You can almost imagine being drawn into the centre of the galaxy by the black hole.

Regards

Kevin

[barkis]

You sure do produce the goods Rob. A wonderful job on this one.

A great combination of equipment and skill in this product.

Is this at the scopes ratio of f8 ?.

A superb Image mate.

Ron.

[moondog]

Excellent image Rob, well captured and processed. Good colour.

MD

[Dave]

Now that is a very nice image.

[Mike Hodgson]

Amazing picture, inspirational.

[Mick.G.]

Have been back to this one four times now.

Gorgeous.

Mick.G.

[Psychobilly]

Very nicely captured and processed Rob....

Never get tired of looking at images like these...

Peter....

[Aza]

Stunning, the detail is amazing!

Great work as usual

[markcol]

Another superb effort Rob, lovely shot.

Mark

[MikeD]

another first class image Rob, the colour and detail are fantastic and I love the scale.

Mike.

[NickH]

Echo all of the above, that is a stonker Rob

[Dangerous-Dave]

That's top drawer Rob - the TMB is certainly delivering results.

[philj]

Oh yes :hello2:That is a lovely image, superb detail, image scale and colours. You must be well chuffed with that one Rob. One for the mags there I think

Philj

[Roy]

First class as usual Rob.

[robindurant]

Crikey! you are Bl....y good.

Robin

[MartinB]

Lovely work again Rob. The exposure time has really paid off.

[greenkat]

Fantastic image , Ive just been playing count the galaxies

[Starjumper]

Cracking image Rob.

John

[adamsp123]

Rob, a wonderful photo!

[Ant]

Rob, thats stunning mate.

10 Hours of data at this time of year shows true dedication and

patience .

At what point is there no advantage to adding more data?

Very nice indeed.

Ant

[SteveL]

Gah, missed this one... dont ask how! That is a beautiful image, and a great way to say goodbye to the astro dark until the end of July. Nice job!