M63 and vuorovesihännät, Kirkkonummi

M63 "Sunflower galaxy" and tidal tails

Spring winter is a challenging time for a star photographer focusing on extensive mists. The Milky Way targets sink to their lands early in the evening, so the well-served targets are mostly galaxies that don’t get their rights in the short term.

Thinking about the next subject, I remembered a lecture a year ago at a CEDIC conference in Austria about the dim tidal tails around many galaxies. They were born in ancient encounters of galaxies, when their mutual gravity has so-called messed up the pack, i.e. thrown a wild number of stars out of the galaxy's disk. Maybe these could be described? With a small 10cm lens tube?

Three nights and 14 hours later the answer was yes, although the tails are so dim that they didn’t really show up in a beautiful picture. So there is also a false color image where the tails stand out on the left and right sides of the Kaarina galaxy.

However, this galaxy is only a small part of the entire 2.5 x 1.9 degree image field where dozens of distant galaxies can be seen. I still compiled a picture of some of them.

Also worth mentioning is the benefits of a remotely operated observatory: the constellation was happily sleeping most of the exposure time for this subject :-).

This description has been automatically translated from Finnish. Click here to see the original text.

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Mikko Peussa - 20.3.2018 at 00.05

Todella hienoa jälkeä.

Jari Ylioja - 20.3.2018 at 18.23

Upea kuva.

Lauri Turunen - 20.3.2018 at 22.08

Mitä ohjelmia käytit jälkikäsittelyssä?

Jari Saukkonen - 20.3.2018 at 22.38

Kiitos kommenteista! Kuvankäsittelyn tein lähes valmiiksi PixInsightissa, tämän jälkeen Photoshopilla pientä hienosäätöä ja noiden kakkos/kolmoskuvien kasailu. Lopuksi viimeistelin rajauksen, sävyt ja tasot Lightroomissa.

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M63 and vuorovesihännät - 17.3.2018 at 23.00 - 18.3.2018 at 05.00 Kirkkonummi Observation number 71798