Location / Date

Zellerndorf, March 2015

Telescope / Mount / Guiding

ASA 10" Astrograph, ASA 2" Quattro Coma-Corrector (focal length: 1057mm, f4.1)
ASA DDM60, no Guiding

Camera / Exposure

FLI ML8300 with Astrodon filters
L 34x10min, 12x2min
R 8x10min, G 8x10min, B 8x10min

Total exposure time: 10h 4min

Processing

Theli, Fitswork, PixInsight, Photoshop

Notes

Messier 94 (also known as NGC 4736) is a spiral galaxy that lies about 16 million light-years away in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici. The diameter of its main disk is some 50,000 light-years across, but the much fainter outer ring extends at least another 30,000 light-years or so. The galaxy is notable in that it has two ring structures and an extremely bright inner region striated with dark filaments of dust that follow tightly wound spiral arms.

It is one of the brightest galaxies within the Canes Venatici I Group (or the M94 Group), a group that contains around 20 galaxies, but it doesn’t appear to be gravitationally bound to any of them.