M74

This is the big, beautiful face-on spiral galaxy M74 in the constellation Pisces. This is 134 images, 300 seconds each, stacked, for a little over 11 hours of total integration time. I took it over four nights because of weather conditions.

This was taken with a Nikon D810A camera and my StellarVue 152 mm refractor. They're on an Astro-Physics Mach 2 GTO tracking mount, and I'm also using a guide scope, camera, and software.

I process this in Pix Insight using star exterminator to stretch the galaxy more than I stretch the stars. I also used masked stretch to try to keep the core from blowing out.