M64, also known as the Black Eye
Galaxy, is known for it's dark band of dust passing in front of the
galaxy's bright central core. This galaxy lies within the
constellation of Coma Berenices, within a cluster of galaxies known
as The Virgo Cluster. This galaxy is thought to have two directions
of rotation. The smaller inner region has a radius of roughly 3,000
light-years which is quite small compared to the outer region
extending another 40,000 light-years. Due to the two separate
directions of rotation, this is thought to cause an extraordinary
amount of new stars being created which make it look like a dark eye
staring back at you through a telescope or in pictures.
'X' marks the spot of The Black Eye Galaxy.
My Observation:
In the 25mm eyepiece at 30x magnification this galaxy stands out
quite easily among a small field of view of very few stars. Other
than a slight hint of the dark band in front of the nucleus, I can't
make out much more detail other than the shape of the galaxy. The
central core fades out quite smoothly to the outside edges where it
then blends into the dark of the space behind it.
After
running my camera until the battery died snapping as many images of
the galaxy as I could, I grabbed my sketch pad and decided to make a
sketch of this galaxy. Due to using a red led for seeing what I'm
drawing I noticed when I got inside that my sketch made this galaxy
quite bright. So I had to bring it into Gimp and dim it down some to
make it really represent what I was seeing.
M64 at 30x magnification
M64 - The Black Eye Galaxy April 19, 2012.
I
stacked 32 images at 30 seconds each, with an ISO of 800. Decided to
try ISO800 in hopes of cutting down some of the light pollution I
struggled to remove in previous pictures I have posted. I also took
18 dark frames and 30 offset frames. I really need to figure out Flat
frames because they will help quite a bit when it comes to processing
and removing vignetting and hopefully even a little bit of light
pollution. Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and edited in Gimp.
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