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Sombrero Galaxy (M104): I was waiting patiently for some clear skies to get some additional blue subs of the Sombrero galaxy with my Skywatcher 80 ED triplet refractor to go with some red and green data I took on the 8th January and last night was the first such opportunity due to unfavourable weather conditions. This is an 85 min cropped RGB integration taken with an ASI 533MM Pro camera which was sufficient to bring out the dust halo surrounding the central bulge of this unclassified galaxy some 31 MLY distant which lies between the constellations Virgo and Corvus. Stacking and processing were done using Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2025.
Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565): Using the same equipment I was able to take some 2.25 hrs of LRGB and Ha data of this edge on spiral galaxy and its smaller companions which fill this area of sky in the constellation of Coma Berenices. The Needle galaxy is between 30 and 50 MLY distant, but is still considered to be part of the local group of galaxies to which ours belongs. Stacking and processing were done using Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2025. The image was cropped to show a closer view of the galaxy, but the wider field image captured by the camera was then use to annotate to show the many other galaxies nearby.
Flame and Horsehead nebulae: It was good to be able to get some more Ha and OIII data on these magnificent nebulae which are located close to the left hand star of Orion's belt (Alnitak). Due to partly hazy skies, I was only able to capture an hour of Ha and OIII data which I combined with a similar amount of data taken with the same equipment (a Skywatcher 80 ED triplet refractor and ASI 533MM pro camera) back in December of 2024. The two data sets were combined and integrated in Pixinsight and processed in the HOO palette which was adjusted to produce a bi-colour and white rendition of this popular target to show the different types of gases present in this star forming region of Orion
Chris Bowden
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