NGC 2903 - Dusty Barred Spiral

 

NGC 2903 is one of the brighter galaxies found in the late Winter/ early Spring and heralds the arrival of galaxy hunting season. It is a dusty spiral with a prominent bar. You can see it prominently in a scope 4" in diameter and up. 

This is a composite of 13 thirteen minute images shot with my ST7 using a .63 reducer on my 6" schmidt-cassegrain.

NGC 2683 Close up

Here is NGC 2683 as seen through my C9. It is a fairly bright and dusty edge on spiral, which is also a known Seyfert Galaxy. Seyfert Galaxies have an active nucleus, and emit large amounts of radio waves. It is suspected that they harbor massive Black Holes in their core. The image has some drift and the stars have trailed a little mostly due to gusty wind.

The little dash shaped star on the bottom limb is actually two stars very close together. The seeing wasn't good enough to split them.

This is a composite of 11 five minute images shot at F5 or so through my C 9.25. I did it with my old StarShoot I CCD.

Signs of Spring...

The rise of the Leo constellation tells us that Spring is on the way. With this in mind, I braved subzero temperatures and got this shot of spiral galaxy M66, part of the "Leo Trio" of large, bright galaxies grouped close together. M66 is a dusty galaxy made of mostly of older stars. It normally has a yellowish tint, but my image does not really show it well.

This image is made of seven stacked 5 minute pics shot through the C9.25 using the StarShoot I CCD. All shot at approximately F5 'ish.