A Nice Surprise

With the smoke from the forest fires starting to move back in, I decided to take a chance at imaging anyway. I couldn't smell the smoke, making me think either 1) my sinuses are stopped up, or 2) the smoke was not a ground level. I'm a little leery of opening the observatory with the smoke, fearing the smoke could ruin the anti-reflective coatings on the corrector plate (on the front of the scope). I had planned on imaging something else instead M77, but I'm glad I settled on M77.

M77

As you can see, M77 is a galaxy, located in the constellation of Cetus. Cetus was the mythical sea monster, but today the constellation is generally called the Whale. The galaxy is about 47 million light years away and contains an active nucleus. An active galactic nucleus is believed to be the result of matter “falling” into a super massive black hole at its center. When the matter falls in, it radiates massive amounts of electromagnetic energy in many bands. Bands, in this case, refers to the visible wavelengths band, and/or radio, microwave, gamma ray, x ray or many other wavelengths of electromagnetic energy. M77 is also classified as a Seyfert galaxy, which is a classification I'm not really familiar with. A chance for more study.