M49 (NGC 4472) is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo. At magnitude 8.4, it is not quite naked eye visible.

M49

This time of year (April) the Milky Way is on the horizon and when we look straight up we’re looking straight out of the Galaxy. The galactic pole is straight up in Coma Berenices.

Also this time of year it doesn’t get fully dark until nearly 10:00 in south/central Utah. I’m taking these pictures before that, during Astronomical Twilight. No moon, but some twilight.

North (toward Polaris) is up in the photo. The picture was taken with a fully modified Canon Rebel camera (this is my one shot color camera) on a TEC 140 telescope in the Alpenglow-Torrey House Observatory in the dark sky community of Torrey, Utah (Bortle 2-3). The ten best of 14 45-second sub-frames were used and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker = 7.5 minute photo. Unguided, binned 2X2 (to make smaller files for internet transfer), no calibration frames. Processed in Photoshop (CS5).

Location in the night sky of the photo:

Source: Astrometry.net