Object:The Black Eye Galaxy (also called Evil Eye Galaxy and designated Messier 64, M64, or NGC 4826) is a spiral galaxy located 17 million light-years away in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices. It was discovered by Edward Pigott in March 1779, and independently by Johann Elert Bode in April of the same year, as well as by Charles Messier in 1780. A dark band of absorbing dust in front of the galaxy’s bright nucleus gave rise to its nicknames of the "Black Eye" or "Evil Eye" galaxy. M64 is well known among amateur astronomers because of its appearance in small telescopes.
It has a diameter of 54,000 light-years.
Taken: June 16, 2020
Telescope: Astro-Tech 14” RC with Starizona Apex ED 0.65x reducer
Mount: Paramount ME II unguided
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MC-Pro (cooled to -10C; Gain: Unity gain) Bin 1×1.
Focuser: Moonlite Nitecrawler
Rotator: Moonlite Nitecrawler
Filters used: Luminousity on a ZWO 8 position filter wheel
Exposures: 102×120 seconds for a total exposure time of 3.4 hours; calibrated with 40 dark frames, 40 flat frames with 100 bias frames.
Seeing Conditions:
Processed with PixInsight and Photoshop CC 2020. Image capture: Sequence Generator Pro