M105l galaxy (NGC 3379) with NGC 3384 and NGC 3389

[menardre]

I am trying to complete my imaging of the interesting galaxies in Leo while Leo is still in a decent portion of the night sky.

Last night I imaged the elliptical galaxy M105 (NGC 3379). It has 2 companion galaxies, NGC 3384 and NGC 3389. I imaged M105 back in 2016 with a Nikon D7100 camera attached to my CPC1100 scope. Since that time my imaging and processing have improved, so I decided to re-image M105. It is not a fair comparison since in 2016 I only took 21 images of 1 minute with ISO 1600 and last night I took 140 images of 2 minutes.

M105 is a very large elliptical galaxy about 36.6 million light years from Earth. It is known to have a supermassive black at its core and has an estimated mass of 100 billion solar masses. This group of galaxies is part of the Leo I group which also includes M95 and M96.

I used an 11 inch SCT with ZWO ASI2600 OSC camera. A ZWO ASI290 attached to 5 inch refractor was used for autoguiding. SGP managed all of the hardware and I was able to acquire 143 images of 2 minutes from 8:30PM until about 1:30AM before the skies got murky, then cloudy. I salvaged 131 images for stacking.

PixInsight used for processing. It is difficult to pull details out of elliptical galaxies mostly because... well, unlike spiral galaxies, there are not really any details.

Roger

Image of M105 taken in 2016 with Nikon D7100 only 21 images, 60 seconds, ISO1600

M105 ReProcessed.jpg (984.16 KiB) Viewed 546 times

Image of M105 taken last night.

M105 Master_DBEdiv_EzDN_PCC_ArcSinH_Game_Curves_RS_MLTnr.jpg (5.38 MiB) Viewed 546 times

M105 Platesvolve.

M105 Lpatesolve.jpg (168.7 KiB) Viewed 546 times

[NGC7000]

Fantastic what you've managed to pull out here, Roger. They are still interesting, those ellipticals.

Tom

[Chuck]

Great job Roger. More integration time really makes a difference. Thanks for sharing.