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Messier 74 – The Phantom galaxy

Details
Equipment used
Object Details

Messier 74 or Phantom Galaxy is a good example of a 'grand-design' spiral galaxy. It is located in the constellation Pisces. This conspicuous spiral is a prototype of a grand-design Sc galaxy. It is more accurately classified as SA(s)c, i.e. as 'barless' without a 'ring structure'. The galaxy is about 32 million light-years away and is speeding away from us at a speed of 793 km/s. It is about 95,000 light years in diameter and contains many star forming regions, or HII regions. These are visible as small red spheres in the arms of the spiral galaxy. Three supernovae have been observed in M74 so far. The galaxy is thought to host around 100 trillion stars. In July 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope began observing M74 and took impressive images in the infrared range.

Sources:
Messier Object Index by Hartmut Frommert (SEDS)
NASA APOD
esa JWST

Image on Astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/r88m0k/
Image in Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr39iIjMVdM/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Setup
Main Deep-Sky Setup

Telescope / Camera Lens
UNC Newton 200/1000

Camera
QHY 294M Pro

Mount
Skywatcher EQ6-R pro

Filter
Antlia LRGB

Integration Time
Lum 144 x 90 s = 3 h 36 min
Red 50 x 180 s = 2 h 30 min
Green 49 x 180 s = 2 h 27 min
Blue 48 x 180 s = 2 h 24 min
Total: 10 h 57 min

Comments
-

Type of Main Object
Galaxy

Constellation
Pisces

Observation Site
Goldau, CH
Bortle Class 4

Date
26th - 28th November 2022

annotated
starless

Astrophotography by Sven Arnold

Sven Arnold
Tennmattstrasse 22
6410 Goldau, SZ
Switzerland

Datenschutzerklärung
info@svenarnold.com

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