Category

Pictures

Category

M74 is a magnificent spiral galaxy about 32 million light years away in the constellation of Pisces.  It has quite low surface brightness which makes it quite a hard galaxy to observe.  It bears a passing resemblance to M101 I always think, but is much dimmer. M74 Galaxy in Pisces Imaged on 15th December 2022 when to The South.  I used my TEC 140 refractor with its field flattener, an Atik 460 CCD camera with Astrodon E series 1.25″ LRGB filters.  All on my MESU 200 mount which was off-axis guided.  The objective lens was very dirty and I cleaned it the following day.  Despite that, the image came out quite nice.This image is made from quite a modest data set comprising the followingLUM > 12 x 300s ; Red > 9 x 300s ; Green 9 x 300s ; Blue > 9 x 300s Which gives a total integration (exposure)…