A mix of 14+ hours of L and 5 hours RGB from under light polluted Adelaide suburban skies and 2+ hours of L from a dark sky (though with poor seeing) I managed to get out under last weekend as lockdown restrictions/guidelines are easing :-)
Full resolution available on Astrobin for the crop and full field.
I've always thought the starfield around M104 was fairly boring but in the full frame shot there's that nice coloured trio at the top right. At that scale, the galaxy is a bit lost maybe though.
And I was curious as to the apparent concentration of "stars" around the galaxy and wondering if they were globular clusters. Turns out a lot of them are - Rolf Olsen has done some dedicated work identifying them in one of his images here which is rather cool!
Nice Mexican hat Paul, M104 is bright enough to shoot a reasonable result even under light polluted skies Those three stars used to be my last star hop to finding M104 visually...before GOTO
Mike: yes, I chose it because I thought I might have a hope of an image while locked in suburbia! That said, though the core is incredibly bright, it took a lot of data to subdue the noise in the edges of the galaxy and in the halo.
That said, though the core is incredibly bright, it took a lot of data to subdue the noise in the edges of the galaxy and in the halo.
