M64, the Black eye galaxy

I captured this image under moonless sky conditions with stars visible down to magnitude 4.6. I was using an 80mm, f/6.3 refractor with a Vixen Atlux mount, PHD autoguiding and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera.

I captured ten-minute sub-frames with matching dark frames, and flats to remove the effect of vignetting in the final image.

The total exposure times were 60 minutes for each filter, H-alpha, SII and OIII. I sued H-alpha for Red, SII for green and OIII for blue.

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M64

Cropped