2 Messier Galaxies and a Pair of Nebulae

March 25 and 26, 2011

Dick Steinberg

Two consecutive nights of clear skies! Hyperion images from the Blue Mountain Vista Observatory. North is up and west is right in all images. For full detail, magnify the images.

M108 , a chaotic galaxy in Ursa Major (NW corner) and the apparently nearby (48 arc-min as projected on the sky) M97, the Owl nebula (SE corner), a beautiful planetary nebula located inside our own Milky Way galaxy. Close examination shows the entire field to be filled with hundreds of distant galaxies belonging to the Ursa Major Supercluster.

M99, (right/west edge) spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices. Along the left/east edge of the image lies the galaxy pair NGC4298 and NGC4302 (edge-on). All three are members of the Virgo galaxy cluster.

IC443, the Jellyfish nebula in Gemini - a supernova remnant roughly 10,000 years old. Distance roughly 5000 light-years. This 60-minute image is a reshoot of one taken earlier this month with only 15 minutes exposure. 

The cone nebula and the open cluster NGC2264. 30 minute exposure. This one would need more time to delineate properly the Fox-Fur nebula. Anyone see a hint of it here?

Coming soon- new images of  M109, Coddington's Nebula and NGC3718.

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Hyperion 317mm f/8 corrected Cassegrain - Paramount ME - Apogee U16M - 4096x4096 nine-micron pixels binned 2x2 - 0.73 arcsec/unbinned pixel - uncropped field-of-view 50 arc-min square - image acquisition and processing with MaxIm DL 5.14 - calibration (sky-flat/dark/bias) - system automation: CCD Commander 1.6.33 - piggy-back guider Orion 80mm f/11.4 + SBIG ST8 camera -  Blue Mountain Vista Observatory.