When a shared love of astrophotography is aligned with friendship, common projects also emerge.
Although there is the idea that astrophotography is a solitary hobby, nowadays with the technology we have at our disposal it’s a reality that can be different. That’s how I (Tito Santos) and my friend João Pedro Martins decided to start this partnership.
Over the course of several nights, (may 9, 11 and 12), from different points in Portugal (Aveiro, Vila Nova de Gaia and Moimenta da Beira), we started collecting photons of this beautiful galaxy M63 – Sunflower Galaxy.
This is a spiral galaxy in the direction of the constellation Canes Venatici, located at a distance of 27,000,000 light-years from Earth and made up of around 400,000,000 stars. We can see its two spiral arms that seem to embrace its core giving the appearance of a sunflower.
Technical details:
– EQ6-R Pro / AVX
– RC telescope 8” #omegon
– Guide camera: ASI 224 MC
– Camera: VeTec 571 C #omegon
– Filter: L Pro 2″
– Exposure time: ~20h
– Crop;