The wind’s 10 – 18 mph but dying, and unlike last night the sky’s clear. Based upon the setup testing performed last night the objective is to nail Messier 106.
The lower shutter is blocking all exterior light and the wind as well. The Optolong L-Pro filter was cleaned and reinserted into the optical path. New flats and dark flats were accordingly run.
61 X 3 minutes, 2X binning, 120 gain, -10C cooling, 5 sec guiding
- M106 61X3m 2X 120G -10C s.jpg (783.67 KiB) Viewed 453 times
For print purposes the image is processed differently - it's been brightened perhaps 10-fold and it is kick-ass.
Messier 106 is a spiral galaxy located a little over 20 million light-years distant. Despite its appearance, which looks much like countless other galaxies, Messier 106 hides a number of secrets. At its heart, as in most spiral galaxies, is a supermassive black hole, but this one is particularly active. Unlike the black hole at the center of our Milky Way, which pulls in wisps of gas only occasionally, Messier 106’s black hole is actively gobbling up material. As the gas spirals towards the black hole, it heats up and emits powerful radiation somewhat similar to that of a laser - although here the process produces bright microwave radiation. The galaxy has another startling feature - instead of two spiral arms, it appears to have four. This second pair of arms can be seen in visible light images as ghostly blue wisps of gas. The extra arms appear to be an indirect result of jets of material produced by the violent churning of matter around the black hole. As these jets travel through the galactic matter they disrupt and heat up the surrounding gas, which in turn excites the denser gas in the galactic plane and causes it to glow brightly.
