M 31 - Andromeda galaxy
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Originally cataloged as a nebula by Messier with the designation M 31. Actually it is a barred spiral galaxy, similar to our won milky way, which is also a barred spiral galaxy. It is our closest major galaxy neighbor , but even then it is still at a distance of 2 million light years. Our own galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are on a collision course. Not to worry though because the collision is expected over 4 - 5 billion years.
The Andromeda galaxy has a diameter of 152,000 lightyears. So it is considerably larger than our own milky way, which measures only about 90,000 lightyears in diameter. It has two satellite galaxies, M32 (near the bottom in the image) and M101 (top right); both are visible in the image.
Because of the large apparent size of this galaxy I have chosen the Canary Two Ultra Wide Field refractor telescope for this image. In total I scheduled 16 missions, all successful. So the total exposure is 800 seconds for the Luminance channel and 320 seconds for each of the color channels. In total almost 30 minutes.
Processing is done in PixInsight.
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M 42 - Orion nebula
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Messier 42 (M42), the famous Orion Nebula, is an emission-reflection nebula located in the constellation Orion, the Hunter. With an apparent magnitude of 4.0, the Orion Nebula is one of the brightest nebulae in the sky and is visible to the naked eye. It lies at a distance of approximately 1,350 light years from Earth and is the nearest stellar nursery to Earth. The nebula has the designation NGC 1976 in the New General Catalogue.
This image is the result of 23 missions with preset Globular cluster through the Chili two telescope. The chosen preset was supposed to deliver for all channels a binning 2x2 image but apparently the specs in the documentation don't correspond to the actual use of binning in the telescope so I ended up with binning 2x2 images for L only and binning 3x3 images for the color channels. That means less resolution than what I had planned for.
The total exposure time is close to 45 minutes. Processed in PixInsight.
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M 42 - Orion nebula with Running man nebula
- Details
Messier 42 (M42), the famous Orion Nebula, is an emission-reflection nebula located in the constellation Orion, the Hunter. With an apparent magnitude of 4.0, the Orion Nebula is one of the brightest nebulae in the sky and is visible to the naked eye. It lies at a distance of approximately 1,350 light years from Earth and is the nearest stellar nursery to Earth. The nebula has the designation NGC 1976 in the New General Catalogue.
According to NASA, the majestic nebula can even be seen with the naked eye as it has an apparent magnitude of +4. The faintest object the human eye can see under the best conditions is +6 on the astronomical magnitude scale. It's, therefore, no surprise that the Orion Nebula has captivated civilizations around the world. For example, the ancient Maya of Mesoamerica interpreted the nebula as the cosmic fire of creation, according to NASA.