Sunflower Galaxy - M63
| Optics |
TEC APO 140APO with Flattener at f/7.1 |
| Mount |
AstroPhysics 900GoTo |
| Camera |
Moravian G3-16200 |
| Filters |
Astrodon LRGB Gen II |
| Date |
29 Mar 2019 - 23 Apr 2020 |
| Location |
Antares Observatory |
| SQM-L |
20.0-21.0 |
| Exposure |
LRGB = 18-10.7-9.7-12.3 hours
total: 50.7h |
| Software |
CCDAutoPilot / Voyager, MaxIm DL, PixInsight, Photoshop CS6 |
| Notes |
9h LRGB data was contributed from Rainer Späni (Ceres Observatory) using a setup with equal optics and camera. |
M63 is located at a distance of around 29 Mio. light years (~8.9 Mpc). Together with M51 and M101 and their companions they build a chain of three groups. Also called the sunflower galaxy,
its luminosity is about 2 times higher than that of the Milky Way or M31. The faint multiple arches and "plumes" on its periphery were first noticed by van der Kruit in 1979. According to
photometry results of a later study by Chonis et al. (2011) the faintest arches and plumes reach SBB of 27 - 29 mag/sq. arcsec. Most probably the system of streams is a result of
accretion of one or multiple dwarf satellites. The presented image shows additional faint streams extending to a diameter of ~110 kpc (360'000 light years) - at a distance of 29 Mio. light years.
Within the field of view several dwarf galaxies were found, whereas five turned out to be unknown and new candidates for M63 satellites of very low surface brightness.
The official publication of new structures found in this image is given here.
click here for a 35% size image, 1500x1200 (1235KB)
click here for a 67% size image, 3000x2400 (4505KB)
A luminance image was created using all data acquired. Given below are the central areas (~65 x 52 arcmin) as luminance and
contrast enhanced inverted luminance (with the center of M63 inserted as positive image for scale).
A labelled image with annotated dwarf satellites can be found here.
A full scale crop of the galaxy center is given here.
