Photo of the Week for July 29, 2016
Like snowflakes, every galaxy is unique. But some galaxies stand out more distinctly than others, such as M64, shown above. Better known as the Black Eye Galaxy, M64 is found in the faint spring constellation Coma Berenices. The blackness of its galactic “eye” is due to an immense cloud of dust and gas that blocks light from stars lying behind the feature. Under good conditions, you can see the obscuring patch in a small telescope at moderate to high magnification.
The nicely detailed photo of M64 shown here was captured by Roger Ménard of Sainte-Sophie, Quebec. For the final image he combined 37, 3-minute exposures at ISO 1600 captured with a Canon EOS RebelT3 DSLR camera fitted to a Celestron Edge HD 14 telescope working at f/7.7 (with focal reducer).
