M95 Spiral Galaxy

It's amazing what a 5.5-inch telescope can capture from 33 million light-years away considering one light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). This was quite a difficult image to process as I found it challenging to reveal the detail within the galaxy without overdoing it.

Messier 95, also known as M95 or NGC 3351, is a barred spiral galaxy located about 33 million light-years away in the zodiac constellation Leo. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781, and cataloged by fellow French astronomer Charles Messier four days later. It has around 40 billion stars.

Details

Lum 48x600Secs

Red 51x300Secs

Green 59x300Secs

Blue 54x300Secs

13 hours 40 mins in total.

Equipment used:

Telescope: Tec 140 F7

Camera: Xpress Trius SX-694 Pro Mono Cooled to -10C

Image Scale: 0.95

Guiding: OAG

Filters: Astronomik LRGB Ha

Mount: iOptron CEM60 "Standard" GOTO Centre Balanced Equatorial Mount

Image Acquisition: Voyager

Observatory control: Lunatico Dragonfly

Stacking and Calibrating: Pixinsight, Photoshop Processing: Pixinsight 1.8

Copyrigth: David Wills at PixelSkies, Spain www.pixelskiesastro.com