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Scope: Zenithstar 66APO at f/4.8; Location: Blair Valley, Anza Borrego Desert, CA; 9 April, 2010; Camera: Artemis285
Exposure: 10 x 6 min Luminance exposure (bin 1x1) with IR/UV Block Filter; 7 x 3 min RGB (bin 2x2)
Processing: Images were captured Artemis Capture (as FITs). Aligned/stacked and dark subtracted in Astroart with Sigma Combine. Central gradient removal was performed in Astroart. Luminance and Color channels were scaled and rough color balanced in Astroart. All 2x2 bin combined stacks were up-sampled to 1392x1040 (1x1 bin resolution). Channels were co-registered in Astroart. The 6 minute IR block exposures were used for the main luminance construction with level adjustments and curves to bring out object features. LRGB combine was done in Photoshop. A light background noise reduction was done with PixInsight LE (SGBNR). Selective sharpening was applied to galaxy features. Final Image size is approximately 1392x1040.
This image was guided; North is up. M95 and M95 are conspicuous members of the M96 Galaxy Group. M96 is the brighter of the two and thus becomes the galaxy group's namesake. Both are spiral galaxies. M96 is on the left and M95 is on the right. The M96 galaxy group is on average 38 million light years distant from Earth. This image replaces an earlier image that can be seen here. Horizontal FOV is 95'.
Image Center is approximately - Equatorial 2000: RA: 10h 45m 11s Dec: +11°43'09"