M105

RA: 10hrs 47min 48secs      Dec: 12º 35' 00"    Mag: 9.3   Distance: 30 million light years   Constellation: Leo

This photo was taken in the same session as M95 .  Observing conditions were the same - new moon, clear skies with no wind but haze present picking up the glow of sodium lights from nearby Abingdon and A34 motorway.  M105 is classed as an E1 Giant Elliptical galaxy which appears as a faint even glow approximately 2' wide.

The image is a stack of just 3 Envisage images, each consisting of 22x21.2sec, 12x21.2 and 40x21.2 exposures making up a cumulative time of just over 26 minutes, at f6.3.  The 3 images were stacked with Maxim DL as usual, but the stacking mode set to 'Average' instead of 'Sum'.  The galaxy was carefully selected out using the ellipsoid selection tool and the background darkened using the curves command in photoshop in Red and Green channels which were greatly in excess of the blue channel.  Midtone enhancement was carried out in RGB channel without the use of layer masks and unfortunately, background stars were loss in the darkening of the sky background.

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