Messier 108 - The Surfboad Galaxy
Date: March 7, 2021
Cosgrove’s Cosmos Catalog ➤#0064
Messier 108 - known as the Surfboard Galaxy (click image for full resolution via Astrobin.com)
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About the Target
Messier 108, also known as NGC 3556 and the "Surfboard Galaxy", is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation of Ursa Major and is 45.9 Million Light years away. M108 is about 110,00 light-years across and presents at an angle of 75 degrees from our line of sight. M108 has a massive black hole at its center that is estimated to be 24 million solar masses - about 8 times the size of the black hole at the core of our own Milky Way.
The Annotated Image
Annotated version of M108 - created with Pixinsight ImageSolve and AnnotateImage scripts. All of the circles with a PGS number are tiny galaxies!
The Location in the Sky
Credit: FreeStarCharts.com. Constellation Map for Ursa Major - Messier 108 indicated with the yellow arrow.
About the Project
Rochester finally gave us a nice clear night on March 7th and I braved the cold to capture 120 subs of 120 seconds each (for total integration of 3 hours) using my Astro-Physics 130mm F7 APO and the ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro mono camera.
M108 measures only 8.7 by 2.2 arc minutes in angular size, so I had to do some zoom and crop in the final image to bring up the scale a bit - this galaxy would do better with a longer focal length.
New Commentary (as I add this image to the website)
You may notice that this image does not have a lot of commentaries. Why is that? Most of my comments are driven by my enthusiasm for target objects or image results. To me, this image is just “OK”. Yes, I was able to resolve a lot of structure in the galaxy but this one did not capture my enthusiasm. What could I have done differently? Well M109 and actually not too far from M97 the Owl Nebula. Image if I had thought to frame the image with both objects being seen? That would have been cool and was a lost opportunity. Would they both fit in the field of view for this scope? Perhaps not, but in another scope - perhaps it would. So this is something I will consider doing in the future.
More Information
Wikipedia Entry: Messier 108
NASA: Hubble Space Telescope image of M108
The Sky Live: Messier 108
Capture Details
Lights Frames
Taken the nights of 3/7/2021
30 x 120 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, ZWO Gen II Red Filter
30 x 120 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, ZWO Gen II Green Filter
30 x 120 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C, unity gain, ZWO Gen II Blue Filter
Total of 3.0 hours
Cal Frames
30 Bias exposures
25 Dark exposures
35 R Flats
35 G Flats
35 B Flats
35 Flat Darks
Capture Hardware
Scope: Astrophysics 130mm Starfire F/8.35 APO refractor
Guide Scope: Televue 76mm Doublet
Guide Scope Focuser: 30 x 120
Camera: ZWO ASI1600mm-pro with ZWO Filter wheel with ZWO filter set
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini
Focus Motor: 30 x 120Camera Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon
Mount: Ioptron CEM60
Polar Alignment: Polemaster camera
Software
Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller
Image Processing: Pixinsight, Photoshop - assisted by Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second-guessing, editor regret and much swearing…..
Why a focuser for the Guidescope?
Basically I am making this change to make the platform consistent with the WO132 platform. I would like to be able to focus the guidescope remotely under computer control. I would also like to have the ability to swap camera and use the TV76 as a wide field imager (using the AP130 as the guide scope.