M94: An Eye in the Sky

M94 (or NGC 4736) is a spiral galaxy located in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs). It was discovered by Pierre Méchain on March 22, 1781, and its position was later determined by Charles Messier in his well-known catalog.

It is located approximately 14.4 million light-years from the solar system. Clearly visible in the images, the spiral arms contain a large number of blue stars—that is, very young and extremely hot stars—surrounded by clouds of ionized gas (HII regions, glowing red), indicating that these arms are the site of intense star formation activity.

Technical Details

The image was taken using a cooled monochrome ASI2600MM camera equipped with LRGBSHO filters and a Celestron C11 x 0.7 (2 m) focal reducer, on an Astrophysics AP900 mount. (Alentejo Remote Observatory, hosted by ARO).

The total exposure time is 36 hours, including 21 hours in luminance mode and 15 in RGB.

Regarding processing, my goal was to obtain pleasing colors and details across the entire image, with a well-detailed core and spiral arms. To preserve color quality and naturalness, I used MaskedStretch (Pixinsight), then recombined the images into LRGB using the ImageBlend script (by CosmicPhotons), making some optimizations for the LRGB combination.

I hope you enjoy viewing it as much as I enjoyed processing it!