Unprocessed Mars until May of 2025!

 Just notes, nothing fancy....

Did collimation in West for jove, did stellar collimation but rushed and incomplete but 3/5Seeing..

Moved to East for Mars and seems to have held collimation, see other star test!  Never before

Whale Galaxy in LRGB

I couldn't be more thrilled with how this turned out! As a novice, every image I capture feels like a milestone, and this one is no exception. With just 80 minutes of integration and only a couple of 5-minute subs for color, the galaxy already reveals stunning details. The structure and glow make it a target I know I'll revisit in the future. It's incredible to think that light from this distant world traveled across the cosmos for millions of years, only to end up in my telescope. Moments like these remind me why I love astrophotography—it's a chance to connect with the universe in a way I never imagined possible.

 ...and HD sized crop!

Galaxies Galore with Abell 2199

 

Checking for target while imaging, as I nearly always do, I spied a tiny galaxy in a pretty dark portion of the sky, NGC6166. 

Solved with annotations

 While processing this portion of our universe I spied galaxies: NGC6166, UGC10404, PGC058277, NGC6158 and SDSS J162915.46+392226.4.  The latter of which is listed as a galaxy with these measured values

Radial velocity / Redshift / cz : V(km/s) 83829 [54] / z(spectroscopic) 0.33279 [0.00018] / cz 99768.0 [54.0]

And RA/DEC of

16 29 15.462 +39 22 26.41

Per

https://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=%406143502&Name=SDSS%20J162915.46%2b392226.4&submit=submit

Running the calculations via Microsoft Copilot AI, it gave me a distance of 3.9 Billion LY!!

if the rv = 83829 what is the distance in millions of light years?

Let's calculate the approximate distance using the Hubble's Law, which states:

[ D = \frac{V}{H_0} ]

where:

• ( D ) is the distance in megaparsecs (Mpc),

• ( V ) is the radial velocity (here, 83,829 km/s),

• ( H_0 ) is the Hubble constant, typically around 70 km/s/Mpc (but exact value varies based on cosmological models).

Step 1: Convert radial velocity to distance in Mpc

[ D = \frac{83829}{70} \approx 1197 \text{ Mpc} ]

Step 2: Convert Mpc to millions of light-years

Since 1 Mpc ≈ 3.26 million light-years, we get:

[ D (\text{millions of light-years}) = 1197 \times 3.26 ]

[ \approx 3905 \text{ million light-years} ]

So, the object is roughly 3.9 billion light-years away! Keep in mind that this is a simplified estimate based on the Hubble Law; more precise distances depend on detailed cosmological models. Let me know if you'd like to explore those too!

Here's the closeup measured and found in ASTAP

Little Pinwheel Galaxy

 Just over 1hr of only Lum, this one really surprised me!  I just find interesting targets and shoot as I go and am happy to revisit this with a new camera, more time and color!!!!

Sunflower Galaxy

 

Just searching for targets and this came up by name, a target I've already hit, in M63.  Just practice for the most part.  No asteroids or comets nearby and the guiding didn't lock for half of the planned time!  :(

Enjoy

Neat interacting galaxy pair

 I often do my planning on the fly as I am usually to busy during the day or on cloudy nights to do it ahead of time.  This is also a bit self serving as I have an off-axis guider and need to validate in the field that I'm actually hitting the guide star I need.  I picked up NGC2444 only to discover later it's NGC2444 and NGC2445, which as an interacting pair is ARP 143.

Per Wikipedia they, "NGC 2444 is a peculiar lenticular galaxy in the constellation Lynx. The galaxy lies about 135 million light years away from Earth, which means, given its apparent dimensions, that NGC 2444 is approximately 50,000 light years across....  NGC 2444 has collided with another galaxy, NGC 2445. As a result of the collision, a bridge of young blue stars has formed between the two galaxies.... NGC 2445 and NGC 2444 (which lies about one arcminute away) form a pair, known as Arp 143"

Here's MY nova astrometry solve - https://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/12166075#annotated 

A pair of recent Mars

 Average conditions, different cameras!

Just trying to beat the pollen season!