{"id":21,"date":"2014-05-04T17:00:32","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T23:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/?p=21"},"modified":"2014-07-14T19:34:07","modified_gmt":"2014-07-15T01:34:07","slug":"bodes-galaxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/?p=21","title":{"rendered":"Virginity lost."},"content":{"rendered":"
Since we are still in catch-up mode and these posts lie between when I started this hobby and when I decided to blog about it, I’ll fast forward a month to my first night out with my gear again. With a month of reading and reflecting on what went wrong the last time, I was off to a bit of a better start. It also helps to be around someone that knows what they are doing… more on this later.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It was May 3rd and I was in Huntsville, TX at the Sam Houston State University Observatory that just so happens to also be the designated dark site for the Huntsville Amateur Astronomy Society (HAAS).\u00a0My very first AP image of the night was Messier 81 (NGC 3031) – Bode’s Galaxy. Bode’s Galaxy is a spiral galaxy about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. M81 is pictured on the left here and on the right, you’ll see\u00a0Messier 82 (NGC 3034) or the Cigar Galaxy. M81 and M82 have this weird gravitational tidal force going on that has significantly increased star production.\u00a0This image has gone down in history as my first successfully imaged target. Everyone remembers their first. I stacked all the frames in that same free program, Deep Sky Stacker, and then stretched them in Adobe Photoshop CC.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\"Messier<\/a>
Messier 81 and 82<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another target (there were three in total) this Y-chromosome-debutante evening was\u00a0M51. I wanted it to be M31, the great Andromeda galaxy, but she was\u00a0gone for the season. So Messier 51 (or NGC5194), The Whirlpool Galaxy, was my gal. The Whirlpool Galaxy is alive in Canes Venatici (hunting dogs)… a small constellation near Ursa Major (larger bear). Ursa Major is more commonly known by part of it’s composition – what we all grew up calling “The Big Dipper” is actually the tail of this big bear constellation. Anyhoo, so Canes Venatici is a neighboring constellation that is the home to this little gem. If you follow the “handle” of the Big Dipper to the star on the end (Alkaid) and then look slightly south (as in, away from polar north relative to Alkaid), you will find Messier 51. M51 was discovered by Charles Messier on October 13, 1773. It was originally thought to be about 37 million light years away and up until just within the last few years when we observed light from two different supernovas within the galaxy that provided more accurate measurements placing it about 25 million light years away. A smaller dwarf galaxy, NGC5195, collided with the larger galaxy we refer to as the Whirlpool Galaxy, NGC5194, and gravitationally ripped some of the material making up NGC5194 off as it passed. This smaller galaxy is what you can clearly see at the outermost tip of one of NGC5194’s arms. These\u00a0photons that have been travelling 1.36146056 \u00d7 10^20 miles to say hi!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Messier<\/a>
Messier 51<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I also managed to image M65 and the Leo Triplet. The Leo Triplet, also known as the M66 group, is about 35 million light years away, so the farthest of anything I shot last night. It consists of M65, M66, and NGC3638. It is conveniently named due to it being in the constellation Leo.<\/span>\u00a0 This is a very cool target that deserves a revisit after the truck out of the ditch taking out mailboxes.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Messier<\/a>
Messier 65 and the Leo Triplet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since we are still in catch-up mode and these posts lie between when I started this hobby and when I decided to blog about it, I’ll fast forward a month to my first night out with my gear again. With a month of reading and reflecting on what went wrong the last time, I was … Continue reading Virginity lost.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4P0Vj-l","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68,"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions\/68"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}