A couple of “messy” galaxies

Well... that's because I've always heard Messier pronounced like “messy A”, sort of. I never took French. If you did, and can pronounce Messier the correct way and it doesn't sound like messy A then let me know. Actually, don't. It doesn't matter.

Anyway, I took an almost clear night to work on the polar alignment and, as you know, the periodic error of the scope. This was the first run after that.

M74 1st night

This is M74, the 74^th object on Mr. Messier's catalog, which just happens to be a very faint galaxy in Pisces. After getting the scope set up and connected to the observatory network, I started imaging: 10 3 minute images with the luminescence filter, 5 with each of the red green and blue filters (3 minutes as well). Feeling pretty good, I was ready to close the observatory, so out in the cold I go. First thing I see is the corrector lens almost completely covered with not just dew, but some frozen dew. Not good. All is lost, I think. Out comes the hair dryer to clear off the dew, and the scope is put up for the night.

The very next night, I'm armed for bear. Well, I take out the hair dryer first thing, anyway. Scope set up, cameras installed, autoguide calibrated, so over to M74 I go for round 2. Back inside, watching the autoguide corrections, it blatantly apparent the seeing is really bad, especially compared to last night. Well, everything is set up, I'm inside and warm, let's give it a shot.

M74 better, I think

I finally decided the seeing was at least twice as bad as the night before, but, I suppose because I wasn't shooting through the cloud on the end of the telescope, I was able to get at least as good of an image with a much shorter imaging run. In this case it was only 5 3 minute luminescence images, and 3 3 minute images each of red, green, and blue. Look closely and I hope you will agree that this one is better.

After imaging M74, I decided to try M33, the galaxy in the constellation of Triangulum. Nothing had improved, seeing wise, so I didn't hold out much hope.

M33

However, it turned out better than I thought it would.

M33 is about 3 million light years (ly) away, about the same as M31, the Andromeda galaxy. It appears that there is a gravitational link between M33 and M31. M33 is about 65,000 ly in diameter, compared to M74 which is about 95,000 ly in diameter. However, M74 is about 10 times further away, about 30 million ly.