My latest image of M106 represents the last piece of data that I was able to acquire in April Y2024. This was a fruitful month with almost 10 full clear nights - wow!
Looking back it turns out that I image M106 almost every year. It is a nice big galaxy that is available all night long during this time of the year. M106 is located in Canes Venatici about 22 to 25 million light years away from us. Its size on the night sky is 17 x 7.2 archmin and its diameter is estimated at 122.6 thousand light-years.
M106 is a Seyfert galaxy meaning that it has a supermassive black hole in the center. I acquired my data with the L-Pro filter which is a broadband filter. In the final processing of the image I was happy to find that despite the broadband data the famous HA jet that is coming out of the center of the galaxy is visible. It is faint but it is visible
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Considering that I have data on M106 from different systems I decided to compare them and see the advantage of the resolution per pixel of a high focal length instrument in practice. My images of M106 consist of:
- 4 hours or 491 frames x 30 seconds taken in Y2020 with my C6 + Hyperstar on an AVX mount with resolution of 2.707 archsec/pixel.
- 13 hours with predominantly 5 minute frames taken in Y2021 with my RASA8+ASI533 MC-Pro with resolution of 1.940 archsec/pixel.
- 5 hours with 5 minute frames taken in Y2023 with my RASA8+ASI2600 MC-Pro with resolution of 1.940 archsec/pixel.
- the current 24 hour data with 10 minute frames taken with my EdgeHD9.25+ASI2600 MC-Pro with resolution of 0.470 archsec/pixel.
I upscaled all the old data in order to compare it to my latest one (0.470" per pixel) and see the difference in details in practice. The comparison can be observed in revisions C and D.
Wow I love the Edge and the details that it is showing in all those small targets.
CS,
Ivan
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