The Mirror Galaxy in Coma Berenices
NGC 4321, or M100, is sometimes called the Mirror Galaxy. It
is a beautiful grand design spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices
that contains 400 billion stars located 55 Mly from us.
that contains 400 billion stars located 55 Mly from us.
Hover over the picture for an annotated version
Date: 2 May 2024
FOV: approximately 30' × 20'; the angular size of M100 is about 7.4'
Telescope: Orion 180mm Mak-Cass (2509mm, f/14, nominally 2700mm, f/15)
Guiding: ZWO ASI120MM mini mono guide camera,
Stellarvue F050G 50mm guide scope
Computer: ASIair pro Raspberry Pi
Mount: iOptron CEM40
Camera: ZWO ASI071MC Pro Cooled (-10°C) Color CMOS gain 90
Pixel size: 4.78 μm
Resolution: 0.393 arcsec/pixel
Filter: none
Stacking: fifty-one 240 second frames using Pixinsight
Total Time: 3 hours 24 minutes
Processing: Pixinsight – SPPC, DBE, SPCC, BlurXT, NoiseXT, DynCrop → Linear
MStr, GHS, HST, PMath MStr + GHS + HST → Stars, Sat,
StarXT, MStr, GHS, HST, PMath MStr + GHS + HST → Starless,
HDR8464PhLm, Sat, PMath ~(~Stars*~Starless) → Blend, scale
Location: Darling Hill Observatory near Vesper, NY