Virgo Cluster

Here is a 3.5 hour exposure of the Virgo Cluster. The Virgo Cluster is a group of galaxies that are fairly close to each other, located roughly 55-65 million light years away. At at dark sky with a decent sized telescope, many of these galaxies can be seen close to each other. This cluster of Galaxies also contains a very famous Galaxy named M87. It is the Galaxy that we got our first photo of a black hole in. 
Picture
Widefield View of the Virgo Cluster
Picture
Virgo Cluster Labelled Showing all the Galaxies in View
Details of How the shot was Taken
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Gear:
  • Olympus OMD EM-5 Micro 4/3 camera 
  • Skywatcher Star Adventurer (Unguided)
  • Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 lens
  • Home made dew heater
    • Made with nichrome wire wrapped in duct tape, which is powdered by a lipo battery 
​Acquisition & Environment:
  • 210x60 Seconds (3.5 Hours)
  • 800 iso @ 150mm (300 equivalent) F2.8
  • 50 Flat Frames
  • 50 Dark Frames
  • 50 Bias Frames
  • Taken: May 6, 2019
Processing:
  • Images processed in DeepSkyStacker
    • 2x Drizzle Stack
    • Brought Saturation to 17 and match all rgb levels
  • Photoshop Adjustments:
    • Cropped to remove stacking errors
    • Adjust Levels to bring Histogram to the front
    • Used RC-Astro's Gradient xterminator to remove the gradient the flats couldn't fix
    • Adjust Colour balance to adjust background colour to be neutral
    • Used Deep Sky Colours HLVG tool to remove any unnecessary greens in the photo
    • Used Astronomy tools make stars smaller and sharper
      • Also Ran a tool to decrease deep space noise
    • Increased the Saturation
    • Increased sharpness from inaccurate focusing 
    • Exported into jpeg
Picture
Markarian's Chain
Picture
Messier 87 Close Up
Picture
M87 Labelled