The Dipper

We have had a cloudy couple of weeks, and the moon's been out the last few days, but this shot only took a couple of minutes when the moon was almost full. It is from my backyard with the Sony DSC-75. It is one, 8-second exposure, with darks subtracted and some minimal stretching done in Registax.

NGC 4312

The night I caught M100 I also moved the camera just a little to the south and found this galaxy, NGC 4312. You can see how the two images fit together: The upper rights stars in this image are the same stars found in the lower left of the M100 image. I cannot force any more detail out of this image, and I can see none in others' photos except in the very most detailed, in which slight spiral arms appear. This galaxy is part of the same cluster of galaxies as M100.

M100 Field

Four other galaxies appear in the M100 image, as marked. I have no idea what is the name of the galaxy on the upper left.

M100

I was excited to get out on the night of April 29. The sky cleared off but for some high, hazy clouds that passed overhead. I was able to take this image of M100, a grand spiral galaxy 56 million light years away in the constellation Coma Berenice. Also in the image just above M100 are two other galaxies. There is a glimpse of one to the right, also, but it was mostly cut off in the processing of the unguided sub-exposures. This is 335 x 8.1-second sub-exposures (just over 45 minutes total) stretched in Registax and Nebulosity. The camera was the DSI Pro on the Vixen R135S on the LXD75.

[Below is a re-processed image of M100 using the same data and more sensitive tools of PSE7. It is slightly less detailed but deeper and less noisy:]