M63

M63, or the Sunflower Galaxy, will probably wrap up galaxy season 2021 for me.

As spring was winding down, I felt like I was quickly exhausting the list of galaxies that would show up reasonably well in my widefield camera lens. 200mm of focal length is great for a lot of objects, but certainly not ideal for faraway galaxies. So I set my sights for M63, and spent a couple nights on this target, eventually collecting 2.1 hours of integrated exposure.

I was hoping this would turn out a bit better. Maybe I was spoiled by my trip to Bortle 4 skies, or maybe it was the earlier galaxies that were slightly larger with slightly more detail. You can certainly make out M63 and tell that it’s a galaxy, but maybe not quite enough detail captured to easily know why it gets its nickname.