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M 100 (NGC 4321), in Coma Berenices
M100, a face-on spiral galaxy in the galaxy-rich constellation Coma Berenices, is a small (6 x 5 arc minute) but bright (magnitude 9.3) member of the Coma-Virgo Cluster. It lies about 65-70 million light years distant, according to Kepple & Sanner and has an estimated diameter of 130,000 light years, similar to the Milky Way's 120,000 light years. North is down in this view, and two small companion galaxies can be seen, NGC 4328 located at the 3 o'clock position and NGC 4322 located at 5 o'clock.
| Date | 2002-05-04, 05 |
| Scope |
Astro-Physics 130 EDF at f6 on A-P 1200GTO mount; ST-4 guiding Meade 416XTE CCD camera with 616 color wheel controlled with MaxIm DL/CCD v3.06. Focus was optimized with FocusMax controlling a RoboFocus drive. |
| Exposures |
L=15x600 sec, R=11x300 sec, G=11x300 sec, B=11x300 sec, all unbinned. FWHM (MaxIm) varied from 1.8 to 2.5 through this series, which was collected over two nights. |
| Processing |
Calibrated and RGB assembled in MaxIm. The luminance image was enhanced with DDP in MaxIm. L and RGB combined in Photoshop, separately stretched and unsharp masked or blurred and then flattened. This was cropped, flattened, and converted to jpg. |