Messier Challenge - M 109 Spiral Galaxy

M 109 in Ursa Major 26th March 2020 @ 21:23 UT

Another great galaxy. The hint of those sweeping spiral arms in the live view was confirmed when I stretched the image a little more in the cold light of morning.

M109 - Ursa Major

Image: 15 seconds x 120 frames (1800 seconds total), gain 6584, bin 2x2, Raw 14, black level 99, camera temperature 9.6 deg C, 1 dark. Stacked in SharpCap Pro 3.2.6248.0. The image was stacked and adjusted in SharpCap. The image was scaled down and cropped in GIMP.

M 109 - processed a little in GIMP to bring out the spiral arms.

I wanted to see a little more so I stretched the image a little more and applied a high pass filter to sharpen. All done in GIMP.

Equipment: Celestron CPC-800 at F5.9, Alt-Az mount, Altair Astro Hypercam 294C Pro Cooled (fan), Celestron Focuser, CPWI controlled remotely via Microsoft RDP and ASCOM.

Astrometry: M 109 is 82 million light years distant.

Charles Messier added M 106 in 1783.