M104

Other image sizes:

VIRGO - SPIRAL GALAXY - MAGNITUDE 8.0

M104 - SPIRAL GALAXY IN VIRGO (Grayscale)

About this Object:

Some of the spiral galaxies give us beautiful, face-on views of it's structure, and they seldom disappoint. But there's just something about a really nice, edge-on galaxy! NGC 891 and NGC 4565 are at the top of that list, but perhaps none is more thrilling than M104, the "Sombrero Galaxy." Perhaps this is because it does, indeed, tend to look like the mexican hat when viewed through a telescope. And make no mistake, this galaxy does look good in a wide variety of telescopes, regardless of aperture. But perhaps what makes M104 so exciting is the fact that it's slightly inclined...a mere 6 degrees. This seems to be just enough to tease the viewer of details in the galaxy disk. But not only that, it gives us a great perspective of how thin these spiral galaxies actually are. Likewise, M104 gives us a glow, where old globular clusters tend to reside all along the outskirts.

Location: Ballauer Observatory near Azle, Texas
Seeing: 4/10
Transparency: 5/10
Temperature: 50 degrees F, -25c at the camera
Date: March 9, 2005
Scope/Mount: 12.5" RCOS Ritchey-Chretien and Paramount ME mount
Camera: SBIG STL-6303e astro CCD camera
Exposure Info: Grayscale image; 95 minutes (5 minute subexposures unbinned)
Processing Information: Dark and flat frame calibration, registration, and DDP in MaxIm DL 4. Lucy-Richardson Deconvolution (3 iterations) in CCDSharp. Cropping, levels/curves, sharpening, and noise removal (despeckle) in Photoshop CS.

PREVIOUS ATTEMPT:

Location: Texas Star Party, near Fort Davis, Texas
Date/Time: May, 2002.
Equipment: 10" LX-200 with SBIG ST-V at f/10; zoom mode
Exposure Info: Six 40 second integrations. Unguided.
Processing Info: Levels and contrast adjustment in Photoshop 5.