M51 & NGC 5195 (Winter 2021)

I've never finished off an image of M51 and NGC 5195, despite their traveling almost overhead, until now.  Here is 18.75 hours with the Atik 460EXC through the 203mm Synta-ONTC Telescope at native f/4.95, Baader MPCC, and Astronomik CLS filter.  This is four different nights of data.

Several smaller galaxies are apparent in the image.  At the bottom left is UGC 8470, a spiral galaxy 125 million light years away.  At the top, in the middle, above a trio of brighter stars, is IC 4282, mag. 17.4, actually twin galaxies something like M51 and NGC 5195, at 635 million light years.

Just above NGC 5195 two galaxies lurk.  One is brighter, on the left, and one is long and thin, on the right.  The brighter one is IC 4278, and the long, thin one is IC 4277.  The brighter IC 4278 is 230 million light years away.  The long, thin IC 4277, despite appearing in most images of M51, is something of a mystery.

Lambert, Lambert R, Timocharis (Mar. 2021)

We had a nice night with decent seeing recently.  I set up the CFF 290 Classical Cassegrain and used with it the QHY5iii485c camera at the telescope's native f/13.5.  Here is one data set, 2000 frames, processed in AutoStakkert!3, Registax 6, and Photoshop.

Lambert, at the corner of the right triangle of large basins, is a wonderful crater whose walls rise 2,000 feet from the floor of Mare Imbrium.  Just south of (down from) Lambert is the amazing Lambert R, an older crater whose floor and much of its wall structure was covered by the lava flow that created Imbrium itself.  Lambert R is a much older crater than Lambert.  To the right is Timocharis.  Between them is the mountain Dorsa Stille, which itself rises 3,000 feet from Imbrium's plain.  The other (washed out) crater in the triangle is Pytheas.

Think the smooth parts of the moon are actually smooth?  Think again.  All kinds of meteor and geologic debris cover the surface. Some items as small as 0.5km appear in this image.