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M109 was first recorded by Pierre Méchain on 12th March 1781 and by Charles Messier on the 24th of the same month. However Messier did not include it in his catalogue and it was only added in 1953. It is a type of spiral galaxy called a barred spiral; it has a bar across the centre from which the spiral arms radiate. Another example is the Seyfert galaxy M77. M109 is about 55 million light-years away and is receding at 1142 km/sec. It is a part of a loose cluster of galaxies in Ursa Major. It subtends about 7 by 4 arc-mins which, at that distance, implies a diameter of about 100 light-years. (Whilst capturing images for this picture, I caught two unidentified objects passing through the field. To see these frames, click here.) Date and Time: 8th April 2008 21:40 to 23:06 UT Camera: MX716 Telescope: LX200 with 0.33 focal reducer Capture: Starlight Xpress. 15 of 95 frames, 300" exposure Processing: RegiStax. 14 frames stacked, wavelets 1-2=10, histogram 140-255, gamma 1.5, histogram 170-235 |
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This is my second attempt at imaging this galaxy but this time without my focal reducer. This gives a larger image but also a dimmer one and I had some difficulty dragging the image out of the background glow of the light pollution from a nearby town. I could see the detail in the preview pictures after enhancement with certain tools in the Starlight Xpress capture software (see my page on M108) and I had to use these tools on each individual frame before aligning and stacking them in K3CCDTools. Date and Time: 1st April 2009 23:48 to 00:40 UT Camera: MX716 Telescope: LX200 at prime focus. Capture: Starlight Xpress. 26 frames, 120" exposure Pre-processing: Star_mx7_usb, background subtraction, non-linear stretch. Processing: K3CCDTools. 26 frames stacked. Post-processing: PhotoImpact: contrast 10, brightness 20, gamma 1.5, Focus Magic 7,100, gaussian blur 3, contrast 40, brightness 40, Focus Magic 4, 100 |
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