M 65 & M 66 (and SN 2013am - May/17)

[jsmoraes (Jorge)]

It was not a good capture. Accustomed, now, with the facilities of the guiding I left the camera capturing and went to my bar drink coffee. Law of Murph: I took so much time to obtain a good focus that the battery was out. What was to be a 1 hour of capture was transformed in 20 minutes.

There is no version of wide scale since the sign came very weakly I had to pull very much in the treatment, leaving an impression artifical in the image. Reduced, hide a little the cosmetic !

GSO 305 mm - Canon Rebel XT - ISO 200 - 20 min - 10 x 2 m - OAG - DSI1 - Coma Cor.

[jsmoraes (Jorge)]

GSO 305 mm - Canon Rebel XT - ISO 400 - 48 min - 24 x 2 min - OAG - DSI1 - Coma Corr.

And with more data:

http://www.astrobin.com/42222/0/?real=&mod=none

[nandopg]

Hi Jorge,
For an accurate, precise and fast focusing I suggest you to use a Bahtinov mask.

Best Regards,

Fernando

[jsmoraes (Jorge)]

I did. And I didn't like. After all, you must tune to get a fine adjustment.

I am using the round shape of stars.

My GSO Coma corrector is of medium quality, therefore some stars at periphery always will show deformation.

Minor problems with colimation: camera, focuser, secondary mirror, primary mirror and OTA is present too.

[madbadgalaxyman (Robert)]

Jorge,

always interesting and enjoyable to see images of M66 and M65 taken with a camera, as they have a different look to CCD images.

M66 in particular is quite an unusual galaxy, with one spiral arm looking broadened and "smeared out", compared to the other spiral arm which is narrow and normal in its appearance.

A reasonable interpretation of the three-dimensional geometry of the broad spiral arm is that it is lifted above the principal plane of M66 by tidal forces (perhaps from a previous encounter with NGC 3628)

Note also the blue spur or stub coming off the bar on its left side. I look at a lot of barred spirals and this feature is very unusual!! This somewhat linear feature, which resembles a supergiant star cloud, is much more blue than the rest of M66;
could it be a small galaxy??? or could the recent star formation in it have been set off by some other unusual process??!??!

cheers,
Robert

Radial features of any kind are very unusual in galaxies, hence my interest in the "blue spur". Dr William Keel (Univ. of Alabama) searched one or two thousand galaxies, and found very few. My own search for radial features also found only a few in the bright galaxy population.

[jsmoraes (Jorge)]

Very interesting information, Robert. Thank you by explanation.
I suppose the blue in the arms should be a intense star formation region.

It seems an unusual galaxy, really. I will read about it

[jsmoraes (Jorge)]

I didn't realize, but a mate called my attention by register of supernovae 2013am in M 65.

http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/sn2013/sn2013am.html
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8111/8...8ea9123f_o.jpg