Mice Galaxies (NGC 4676)
The Mice Galaxies (NGC 4676) are a pair of colliding (interacting) galaxies in the constellation Coma Berenices about 300 million light years away. The tails are created by the gravity differential between lead and trailing portions of each galaxy as they go through the collision. This collision will probably repeat until they form a single galaxy.
My current (6/1/2016) distance record. Soon to be broken.
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Equipment
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  • Celestron 11 on a CGEM mount, Atik 460EX monochrome, Starizona F7.5 coma corrector, Starizona Hyperstar, Orion off axis guider, and Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 autoguider for guiding.
Image
  • Luminance: 38X 3-Minute exposures (1.9 hours) F7.5
    R,G,B: 18X 1.5-Minute, 25X 2-Minute, 26X 1.5-Minute exposures (1.9 Hrs) with the Hyperstar F2
    3.8 hours total exposure.
Software
  • PHD2 for scope guiding. Nebulosity for image capture, calibration, stacking, and preliminary processing. Photoshop CS5.1 for final processing and Noiseware noise reduction.

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