Category Archives: Astronomy

Messier 95 & 96

M95 (NGC 3351) & M96 (NGC 3368) are spiral galaxies in the constellation Leo. At magnitudes 9.7 and 9.2, respectfully, they cannot be seen by naked eye. See their location below.

M95 & M96

My first attempt on March 24th was too cloudy. I increased the exposure time and waited for a more clear night and less moon on 04/14/2023.

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 14 120-second sub-frames were used and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker = twenty minute photo. Unguided, binned 2X2 (to make smaller files for remote transfer), no calibration frames. Processed in Photoshop (CS5).

Location in the night sky of the photo:

Source: Astrometry.net

Messier 40

M40 is an optical double star (a chance alignment of two independent stars at different distances from earth) in the constellation Ursa Major and in the center of the photo below. Ursa Major is known as the Big Dipper and is circumpolar for northern observers (it never sets). Many apparent single stars are actually double stars, held together by mutual gravity and called binary systems. Roughly half the sky’s stars are binary.

M40

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