The Sunflower Galaxy is a flocculent spiral galaxy about 27 million light-years away from Earth, and Pierre Tremblay’s well-composed, exposed and processed image of the astronomical object is this week’s SkyNews Photo of the Week.

Tremblay said he gathered the data for LLRGB composite image May 16-18, 2020, from his observatory located in Notre-Dame-du-Rosaire, in a Class 3 sky.

Using a Takahashi  FS-102 (845 mm) F8 with Takahashi flattener 1.04X and robofocus, he said the camera was a Qs-583 WSG, with a Meade DSI pro as the guide camera. The mount was a Losmandy G-11 Gemini 1 level 4, with an Ovision gear upgrade.

For filters, he used Astrodon E-series first generation colour filters and Astrodon h-alpha 5nm filter. He said he processed the image with with MaximDL, ImagesPlus, Registar and Photoshop.

He took 3 exposures at 350 seconds each for Red binned 2 , 3 exoposures at 300 seconds each for Green binned 2, 3 exposures at 300 seconds each for Blue binned 2, and 6 exposures at 1,200 seconds each for Luminance binned 1.

This week, we also wanted to highlight the laudable effort of “a first-time astronomer’s attempt (at age 50) to overcome basic equipment.”

Taken from Valley, Nova Scotia, Darren MacIntosh sent SkyNews his photos of Jupiter and its four main moons. He said he used an iPhone 7 through a 6mm Plossl and a Celestron Travelscope 70DX, shooting the pictures at 3 a.m. on May 28.

“First photos, I think, of many — neither artistic nor professional, but a triumph of patience over pocketbook :)” he wrote.

Indeed, we think it’s great when we see people shoot for the Moon — even if you miss, you might land on another planet.