Astrophotography By Martin Jansz

It was discovered by one of my favourite observers Caroline Herschel in 1783, and later John Herschel observed it in the Cape of Good Hope. It is rises above my house and is well placed to image. The clumping of stars right to the nucleus is fascinating to see however it retains a very symmetrical shape. Burnham has a two page description where he notes: a maximum rotation of 360 miles per second; a gaseous outflow discovered in 1970 at 70 miles per second; a strong radio source discovered by B.Y. Mills in Sydney, Australia. It's estimated at 9.8 million light years. O'Meara covers it in detail as Caldwell 65, and describes the recent research as a galaxy of furious star building. It has a mass about 75 billion suns with 14 globular clusters.

Image details:
Date: 12 September 2014
Exposure: RGB: 9*300:300:300 secs, @ -20C
Telescope: Celestron CGE11
Camera: Atik 314L
Filters: Astronomik L-RGB set (1.25") Type 2C
Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

I really like this galaxy for two reasons. The pretty star field in the background frames the galaxy very nicely, and is unusual. The tight and very symmetrical arms of the spiral are again unusual. I would like to image this in colour next time. There are few references to it, or images of it.

Image details:
Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

Date: 27 February 2014
Exposure: Unfiltered: 6*480 secs, @ -17C
Telescope: Celestron CGE11
Camera: Atik 314L

Center (RA, hms): 14h 32m 40.949s
Center (Dec, dms): -44° 10' 36.960"
Up is 2.05 degrees E of N

Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

Image details:
Date: 31 January 2014
Exposure: Unfiltered. 11*120 secs, 6*360, @ -12C
Telescope: Celestron CGE11
Camera: Atik 314L

Center (RA, hms): 13h 37m 00.800s
Center (Dec, dms): -29° 51' 45.112"
Up is -15.2 degrees E of N

Image details:
Date: 10 March 2014
Exposure: RGB: 2*320:320:320 secs, @ -8C
Telescope: Celestron CGE11
Camera: Atik 314L
Filters: Astronomik L-RGB set (1.25") Type 2C
Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

Image details:
Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

Date: 25 February 2014
Exposure: Unfiltered: 11*360 secs, @ -14C
Telescope: Celestron CGE11
Camera: Atik 314L

Center (RA, hms): 13h 38m 01.922s
Center (Dec, dms): -17° 52' 33.680"
Up is 2.43 degrees E of N

Image details:
Date: 24 February 2014
Exposure: Unfiltered: 10*80 secs, @ -14C
Telescope: Celestron CGE11
Camera: Atik 314L
Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

Image details:
Date: 25 February 2014
Exposure: Unfiltered: 10*20: 15*120 secs, Total 1680 secs @ -13.5C
Telescope: Celestron CGE11
Camera: Atik 314L
Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

Image details:
Date: 29 January 2014
Exposure: Unfiltered: 8*30 secs, @ -15.5C
Telescope: Celestron CGE11
Camera: Atik 314L
Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

Image details:
Date: 12 September 2014
Exposure: LRGB 6*300secs each filter, @ -20C Telescope:
Celestron CGE11 with F6.3 Reducer
Camera: Atik 314L

Center (RA, hms): 03h 33m 36.043s
Center (Dec, dms): -36° 08' 19.469"
Up is 179 degrees E of N

One of my favourite images: a dense galaxy field with a zoo of types. The spiral on the lower left NGC 3312 adds real character. There are numerous small spiral galaxies that suggest the Hubble Deep Field, where numerous galaxies appear with a deep exposure. The bright elliptical galaxies create a nice contrast in the field.

NGC 3312, NGC 3311, NGC 3309, NGC 3308, NGC 3307
Numerous PGC catalogue galaxies.

Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

Image details:
Date: 11 January 2015
Exposure: RGB 7*300 secs, L 23*300 secs @ -12C Telescope: Celestron CGE11
Camera: Atik 314L
Filters: Astronomik L-RGB set (1.25") Type 2C

Center (RA, hms): 10h 36m 41.500s
Center (Dec, dms): -27° 31' 00.371"
Up is 179 degrees E of N

This galaxy is 65 million light years away - dinosaur time. I was pleased to record the faint spiral arms for this galaxy, a barred type. It took some effort with the image processing. The ring in the centre is an expanding density wave due to star formation. It has an interesting discovery: “by Friedrich Winnecke of Karlsruhe, Germany, on 17 December 1868, while he was searching for comets.” There is a nice paper highlighted in Wikipedia for the pattern speed from 1994.

Image details:
Date: 11 November 2014
Exposure: LRGB: 14*180;9*300:300:300 secs, @ -20C
Telescope: Celestron CGE11
Camera: Atik 314L

Filters: Astronomik L-RGB set (1.25") Type 2C
Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

The pair of galaxies are separated by 60,000 light years - almost a galaxy diameter. There is a faint bridge that shows the pair are interacting, and detailed analysis has shown starburst activity closer to the interacting side. The pair is 90 million light years away. The standard observing guides do not cover the pair. The pair has been well researched and a paper has been published: "The isolated interacting galaxy pair NGC 5426/27 (Arp 271)". The paper suggests a numerical simulation will be undertaken in future.

Image details:
Date: 17 May 2015
Exposure: LRGB: 3*300:300:300:300 secs, @ -16C
Telescope: Celestron CGE11 F6.5
Camera: Atik 314L
Filters: Astronomik L-RGB set (1.25") Type 2C
Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

The area in Dorado has a special collection of galaxies, and this spiral is one of the best, with an striking structure. Stephen O’Meara in his wonderful guide “Southern Gems” has a detailed description. The pink H2 star forming regions are visible in the inner arms, with strong dust lanes. The faint outer arms are just visible. The bright core, he notes, is likely to have a massive black hole, and emits intense cosmic radiation- an active galactic nuclei AGN. About 10% of galaxies have this feature, called Seyfert Galaxies, after Carl Seyfert, who classified them in 1943, with the observation of the bright, broad, spectral emission lines. It is 60 million light years away.

By coincidence, hours later, an APOD image was posted. They used a remote observatory in Chilie using a 1 meter CDK telescope. I was pleased that my image using a more modest setup with the constraints of inner city light pollution captured many of the details. I am hoping for improved sharpness when I start using my new mount.

It was challenge to process. Good image calibration, deconvolution, and an arcsin stretch was used. All processing was in Pixinsight.

Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

Image details:
Date: 28 November, 11, 12, 16 December 2021
Exposure: LRGB @ -12C
73 360s (7.3 hours)
19 360s (1.9 hours)
20 360s (2 hours)
20 360s (2 hours)
Telescope: Celestron CGE11 F6.3
Camera: Atik 314L
Filters: Astronomik L-RGB set (1.25") Type 2C
Taken from my observatory in Melbourne, Australia

Center (RA, hms): 04h 19m 57.867s
Center (Dec, dms): -54° 55' 45.495"
Up is 63.4 degrees E of N