M106 and Friends (2026)

The highlight of this field is the magnificent spiral galaxy M106, also known as NGC 4258, located some 24 million light-years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici. It is one of the brightest nearby galaxies and is very large at 135,000 ly across. This galaxy has a rare second pair of spiral arms composed of hot gases rather than stars resulting from a supermassive black hole in the galaxy center. Although the black hole is not visible in my image, part of the red-yellow gas arms are visible emanating from the core. Also visible are blue dense portions on the outer parts of the arms that indicate regions of gas, dust, and star formation. Lots of red hydrogen rich regions are also found streaming out from the core.

Being the last image from my home observatory (The Happy Frog) I wanted to do a large glorious nebula, however, none was available from my location when I started so I decided to zero in M106. I thought I would just crop it and leave it at that. When I started collecting data I discovered a very rich field loaded with many oddly shaped galaxies. Just above M106 is a small irregular galaxy NGC 4248 is part of the same galaxy group as M106. If you go a little further above and left, two tiny galaxies, NGC 4231 and NGC 4232, show quite a bit of structure. The edge-on galaxy NGC 4217 on the upper part of the image has a pronounced dust lane and is located approximately 60 million ly away.

For an extra punch I collected Ha data and did a soft blend to highlight the hydrogen rich regions around the core and arms. I really liked how the LRGB image came out and wanted to preserve some of that original structure when I did the Ha blend.

Higher Quality:

M106 and Friends (2026)
Dates: 3-17-26, 3-18, 3-23, 3-28, 4-7, 4-8, 4-9, 4-19, 4-20, 5-4
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
Telescope: Astro-Tech AT115EDT 115mm Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 805mm (644mm w/ FR)
f/7 (f/5.6)
Focal Reducer: 0.8x AstroTech Field Flatterner/Focal Reducer
Mount: Orion Sirius
Filter Wheel: ZWO
EFW 8 x 1.25"
Filter: Antlia Ha, ZWO L, R, G, B
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope/ZWO 60mm Guidescope
Exposure: Ha 135 x 300, L 478 x 90, R 113 x 90, G 96 x 90, B 118 x 90 (00h 00m)
Gain: 139
Offset 20
Sensor Temp: -10 C
Processing: NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, GraXpert, Bill Blanshan Color Masks, Bill Blanshan Stretching, Topaz Denoise.

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