Croc’s Eye Galaxy (M94) in Canes Venatici

Messi­er 94 (M94, NGC 4736) is a nice spir­al galaxy situ­ated in con­stel­la­tion Canes Ven­at­ici, and one of the near­er bey­ond our Loc­al Group of Galaxies.

Spir­al galaxy M94 was clas­si­fied Sab because of its extremely bright inner region. This bright cir­cu­lar disk is sur­roun­ded by a ring of act­ive star-form­ing regions, traced by blue young star clusters in col­or images, which sharply sep­ar­ates it from a much less bright out­er ring of an older yel­low­ish stel­lar pop­u­la­tion. In the out­skirts, this region how­ever ends again in a ring with mod­er­ate star form­a­tion activ­ity, so that M94 is one of the rel­at­ively rare galax­ies in which two ‘waves’ of stel­lar form­a­tion can be observed. In very long expos­ures, a fur­ther very faint ring, about 15 arc minutes across, becomes visible.

The dis­tance of M94 is estim­ated to be about 16 mil­lion lightyears.

[descrip­tion from seds.org]

Details

Tele­scope:
RCOS 14.5″ f/​8
Mount:
ASA DDM85
Cam­era:
SBIG STL-11000M
Fil­ters:
Astro­don Gen2
Expos­ure:
LRGB 280:120:140:120 min.
Loc­a­tion:
ROSA Remote Obser­vat­or­ies South­ern Alps
Author:
© Mar­tin Ruster­holz, Astrophotographer

Find­er Chart Croc’s Eye Galaxy (M94) in Canes Venatici

M94 Galaxy Sky Chart Astrophotography Martin Rusterholz

Image cre­ated by Skychart

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About Me

Hello, my name is Martin Rusterholz. I’m a Swiss amateur astrophotographer living near Zurich, the biggest town in Switzerland. My interest in astronomy started when I was 16. At that time, I built my first Newtonian telescope and mount. I studied physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) which was the only study including at least some aspects of astronomy and astrophysics. “Looking at the nights sky is an experience touching everybody deeply inside, something common to all human beings independent to the language spoken by the individuals”. Deep-sky astrophotography is my passion.

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