May 2006 Galaxy Hunting

In the astrophotography hobby, April and May are glorious times of year to shoot some relatively close galaxies with views completely unobstructed by the plane of the Milky way.  What do I mean by that?  During the summer and winter, if you're in a dark enough area, you'll see the stars of the milky way stretching across the sky, not so in spring and autumn.  Here are three galaxy shots that I took in the last two months, each of them are composites of about 2 hours worth of exposure time with my new camera, a modified canon 350d (modified specifically for astrophotography).  The first in the parade of galaxies is known as Bode's nebula.  Bode's nebula is of course, not a nebula at all but rather a pair of galaxies in the constellation ursa major.  The pair, known as m81 and m82 are gravitationally bound and it's been theorized that m81 (the one on the right, a grand design spiral galaxy) has been shredding apart it's neighbor.  It's known as Bode's nebula because on new years eve, 1774, it was first described by Johann Bode as a difuse nebula.  A hundred years later when galaxies were better understood, that was corrected.  Next up we have m101, also known as the pinwheel galaxy.  This galaxy, also located in ursa major, is visible with binoculars under very dark skies located between the first and second stars of the big dipper's handle and offset to the north.  It's lopsided shape is most likely due to a tidal interaction with another galaxy in the neighborhood, which one, I can't even guess.  This galaxy is about 24 million light years away.  If you do go looking for it, you must dark adapt your eyes as it is not a very bright galaxy at all, it's only under long exposure photography can we begin to see the magnificent spiral arms this beauty holds.  Last up is the "Black eye galaxy", so called because of its... well, it's black eye!  Can you see it?  M64 was discovered by Edward Pigott on March 23, 1779, interestingly, just 12 days before the aforementioned Johann Bode found it completely independently.  It was given the black eye monicker shortly afterwards by William Herschel.  The dark part of the galaxy, i.e. the black eye, is the result of heavily concentrated interstellar dust lanes, under very high resolution photographs taken by hubble, we now know that this dust lane is alive with star formation and many hydrogen alpha emissions.  Speaking of Hydrogen alpha emissions, these are the very well known red nebulas that populate our summer skies, when next I post, I hope to have some of these summer beauties from within our own milky way galaxy... stay tuned!

Comments

[Perry]

Spectacular sights-- thanks for sharing them!

-P