M96
Messier 96 Galaxy (slight crop) - Click here for full resolution
Messier 96 is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 31 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. It was discovered by French astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1781. After communicating his finding, French astronomer Charles Messier confirmed the finding four days later and added it to his catalogue of nebulous objects. It is categorized as a double-barred spiral galaxy with a small inner bulge through the core along with an outer bulge. Messier 96 is about the same mass and size as the Milky Way. It is a very asymmetric galaxy; its dust and gas are unevenly spread throughout its weak spiral arms, and its core is just offset from the midpoint of its extremes. Its arms are also asymmetrical, thought to have been influenced by the gravitational pull of other galaxies within its group.
source: Wikipedia
NGC/IC:
Other Names:
Object:
Constellation:
R.A.:
Dec:
Transit date:
Transit Alt:
NGC3368
-
Galaxy
Leo
10h 46m 45.7s
+11° 49′ 12″
21 March
64º S
Conditions
M96 is a typical target for the spring ‘Galaxy Season’ and reaches maximum altitudes of around 60° at my location. Images were taken from the remote hosting site IC Astronomy in Spain across six different nights in mid April and early May 2024.
Equipment
The default rig at the observatory was used. This is built around a Planewave CDK-14 telescope on a 10Micron GM2000 mount, coupled to a Moravian C3-61000 Pro full-frame camera. The RoboTarget module in Voyager Advanced allowed automatic scheduling to find time-slots in the early hours of astronomical night.
Telescope
Mount
Camera
Filters
Guiding
Accessoires
Software
Planewave CDK14, Optec Gemini Rotating focuser
10Micron GM2000HPS, custom pier
Moravian C3-61000 Pro, cooled to -10 ºC
Chroma 2” RGB unmounted, Moravian filterwheel “L”, 7-position
Unguided
Compulab Tensor I-22, Windows 11, Dragonfly, Pegasus Ultimate Powerbox v2
Voyager Advanced, Viking, Mountwizzard4, Astroplanner, PixInsight 1.8.9-2
Imaging
Imaging was pretty straight-forward, with sufficient altitude of the object. M96 was captured using R,G and B broadband filters and no Luminance. A total of almost 20h of data was acquired.
Resolution
Focal length
Pixel size
Resolution
Field of View
Image center
9456 × 6310 px (59.7 MP)
2585 mm @ f/7.2
3.8 µm
0.30 arcsec/px
47' x 31’
RA: 10h 46m 45.854s
Dec: +11° 49’ 13.13”
Processing
All images were calibrated using Darks (50), Flats (25), registered and integrated using the WeightedBatchPreProcessing (WBPP) script in PixInsight.
Processing followed a pretty standard pattern. There were no big gradients, but whatever gradient there was, was eliminated using the new GradientCorrection tool in PixInsight, using pretty much the standard settings. After corrections, individual colour channels were combined into an RGB image. Colour Calibration (SPCC), deconvolution (BXT) and stretching using GHS then created the base non-linear image.
In the original stretch (left), the center of the galaxy was a bit blown out. HDRComposition (center) was quickly over-doing it. A blend of 65% of the original with 35% of the HDR version (right) ended up as the final image.
In the non-linear stage, some contrast was added using CurvesTransformation and noise was removed using NoiseXTerminator. Several attempts were made to bring out the dust bands a bit more, without loosing the brightness of the arms. LocalHistogramEqualization was applied, but did not seem the best tool this time. HDRComposition was applied, but it was difficult to find settings that would only have a modest effect. So in the end the choice was made to create an HDR version and blend that into the original image for only 35% while retaining 65% of the original image. This gave a nice balance between brightness and structure in the dust-bands. Some final touches included a bit more contrast, slightly cooling down the image by reducing saturation of the reds, and setting the background value to 0.07.
Processing workflow (click to enlarge)
This image has been published on Astrobin and received Top Pick Nomination.
