M104 – The sombrero Galaxy

M104 – Astro-Physics 127.mm f/8, 0,78x reducer, Nikon D750a, 40x180s, ISO100, PixInsight, BlurXterminator, NoiseXterminator, ArcSinh Stretch, 2x drizzle

Since about 30 years ago, when an astronomy club colleague showed me M104 the sombrero galaxy in a 20×60 binocular it was one of my favourite deep sky objects.
A night after the great Aurora Display of 2024 I joined a friend who was imaging the Leo triplet, and had a go at M104 using the Starfire 127mm on the G-11 mount. We had a fun evening, saw some faint meteors, watched the milky way slowly rising.

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The Rosette Nebula

The Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237, 2238, 2239, 2246) with the embedded open cluster NGC 2244, 1h53, Nikon D750a, Takahashi FS-60CB, Vixen Polarie, Optolong L-enhance

The Rosette nebula is a large and relatively bright emission nebula in the constellation Monoceros. Various parts of the nebula have separate NGC numbers and the embedded star cluster itself is NGC2244

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NGC 4565

Move your mouse over the image to see annotations for some galaxies.

A larger version of this image which has been annotated with AVM headers can be opened in Microsoft WWT:ngc4565_150mm.jpg

Telescope:
150mm f/5 Newtonian, Baader MPCC Coma Corrector
Camera
Nikon D200
Exposure:
4x300s, ISO 800
Date:
18th, April 2009
Processing:
Preprocessing (Dark, Flat & Bias correction), Alignment & stacking in IRIS, histogram adjustment curves, color correction in Photoshop.

From Clavius to Schiller

This is a two-frame mosaic taken with a DMK21 camera and an Astro-Professional 80mm ED refractor:


The very obvious crater in the middle of the mosaic is Tycho, it is relatively young and therefore the ejecta rays can still be seen brightly across the lunar landscape. Please note the dark area directly around Tycho which is also caused by ejecta of the impact.
To the lower right is the beautiful crater Clavius which has a nice curve of smaller craters on the floor. To the lower left you can see the very elongated crater Schiller which was produced by an oblique impact. Read More

Gassendi, Clavius & Schiller

After showing Venus, M45, M42, Saturn and the moon to my in-laws I stayed on the roof for a little longer and took some AVIs using our club’s new DMK camera. I used my 150mm f/5 Newtonian telescope with a 2x barlow and a 90° prism (this gives about 2,7x). Again I had big troubles focusing because of my wobbly Super-Polaris mount.

Crater Gassendi and Mare Humorum:

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