Observing Report 6th-7th February 2013 (Incoming at 140km/s)

Posted by @ 7:40 pm on Monday 11th February, 2013.

Cribbed from Wikipedia:

"Messier 98 (also known as M98 or NGC 4192) is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain on 15 March 1781 along with M99 and M100 and was cataloged as a Messier object on 13 April 1781. Messier 98 has a blue shift and is approaching us at about 140 km per second."

Hmmm... "cataloged"... we Brits use the word "catalogue", so use it as a verb and the past tense is "catalogued". Surely the past tense of the verb "to catalog" should be "catalogged", as in "logged" and "blogged"?

Anyway, less of the Inner Stickler stuff. With the temperature down at -8C it was too damned cold to stand outside looking through the scope so the session was just a photo-shoot controlled from the comfort of the warm-room, replete with Jaffa Cakes and hot tea. M98 is one of the faintest objects in Messier's catalogue... I really wanted to be taking 60-second subs of it but a high background haze spoiled that idea - the best I could get away with was 300 seconds a shot, and I didn't get enough subs for a decent image anyway as a low mist rolled in and spoiled things. I'll try to get more subs when the weather improves, in the meantime here's the best I can do with what I've got so far. It's a tad noisy:

M98 (aka NGC4192), an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices.
Subs: 20 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO800.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

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