Globulars and a Galaxy

Clear nights are hard to come by this year, so when I got a few back in mid June I stayed up late and captured a few DSOs (that's Deep Sky Objects). Luckily the 15th was a Friday, so I could sleep in a bit on Saturday.

First up is M80, a globular cluster in the constellation Scorpius. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1781. With an apparent diameter of about 10' and at an estimated distance of 32,600 light-years, M80's spatial diameter is about 95 light-years. It contains several hundred thousand stars, and is among the more densely populated globular clusters in the Milky Way (Wikipedia).

M80 - EdgeHD-11 w/FR f/7.0
ASI1600mm Pro (RGB filters 20x30 sec each) 0.5 hours integration time
June 15, 2018

Next is M28, a globular cluster in the constellation Sagittarius. It was discovered by French astronomer Charles Messier in 1764. He briefly described it as a "nebula containing no star... round, seen with difficulty in 3½-foot telescope. M28 is at a distance of about 17,900 light-years away from Earth, has a combined 551,000 times the mass of the Sun and is 12 billion years old (Wikipedia).

M28 - EdgeHD-11 w/FR f/7.0

ASI1600mm Pro (RGB filters 20x30 sec each) 0.5 hours integration time

June 16, 2018

Finally, a well known galaxy of amateur astronomers. The Black Eye Galaxy (also called Evil Eye Galaxy; designated Messier 64, M64, or NGC 4826) is a galaxy which was discovered by Edward Pigott in March 1779, and independently by Johann Elert Bode in April of the same year, as well as by Charles Messier in 1780. It has a spectacular dark band of absorbing dust in front of the galaxy's bright nucleus, giving rise to its nicknames of the "Black Eye" or "Evil Eye" galaxy. M64 is well known among amateur astronomers because of its appearance in small telescopes. It is a spiral galaxy in the Coma Berenices constellation (Wikipedia).

M64 The Black-Eye Galaxy - EdgeHD-11 w/FR f/7.0

ASI1600mm Pro (RGB filters 29x60 sec each) 1.4 hours integration time

June 15, 2018