M63 is a magnificent spiral galaxy located in the Northern constellation of Canes Venatici, about 30 million light years away.  The galaxy is a member of the M51 group.  There are lots of faint galaxies in the background. M63 – The Sunflower Galaxy Technical Data Full resolution image here (opens in new tab)M63, often called the Sunflower Galaxy because of its resemblance to that flower, is a spiral galaxy about 27 million light years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici.  It is a member of the M51 group of galaxies.I captured the data for this image of the galaxy from my back yard observatory in Nottingham, UK over the nights of 4th and 5th of May 2021 when M63 was high near the zenith.  Most of the data was captured in the middle of the night on an automated basis whilst I was asleep in bed!  I used my…

NGC 7814 – The Little Sombrero Galaxy NGC 7814 is an edge-on spiral galaxy 40 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus.  IT is nicknamed “The Little Sombrero” because of its likeness to The Sombrero Galaxy M104 in Virgo.  Close examination of the picture reveals many tiny galaxies, up to a billion light years away in the depths of The Universe.The dust lanes of the edge-on spiral arms can be easily seen. Image Technical Data NGC 7814 is very remote and so needs a long integration (exposure) time.  This image was captured from my backyard observatory in Nottingham, UK over the course of three nights in October 2019 (a very wet period in the UK and the capture nights were 2,17 and 24).  It took significant dedication to capture the subframes for this image given the dreary weather circumstances  and I nearly gave up on several occasions!  I used…

NGC6946 – The Fireworks Galaxy NGC6946 is located on the border between Cygnus and Cepheus and is a fairly bright galaxy about 25 million light years away. It is dubbed the “The Fireworks Galaxy” due to the unusually high number of supernovae that have occured here – ten – that have been observed during the last century. Typically a galaxy would normally have one per century and it is not known why this galaxy has had ten times the average. The galaxy is quite heavily obscured by dust within our own galaxy and this is probably the reason why it was not accorded the honour of a Messier catalogue number. Image Technical Details Imaged from my back yard in Nottingham, UK, during September 2020 whilst high overhead. I used my TEC140 refractor with Atik 460 CCD camera and Astrodon LRGB Generation 2 E series filters and a Ha (3nm) filter. …