Greg

Terri

Greg

NGC 4244, also known as Caldwell 26, is an edge-on loose spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici, and is part of the M94 Group or Canes Venatici I Group, a galaxy group relatively close to the Local Group containing the Milky Way. In the sky, it is located near the yellow naked-eye star, Beta Canum Venaticorum, but also near the barred spiral galaxy NGC 4151 and irregular galaxy NGC 4214.

With an apparent V-band magnitude of 10.18, NGC 4244 lies approximately 4.3 megaparsecs (14 million light years) away. A nuclear star cluster and halo is located near the centre of this galaxy.  (Wikipedia)    

What is a nuclear star cluster you might ask:

A nuclear star cluster (NSC) or compact stellar nucleus (sometimes called young stellar nucleus) is a star cluster with high density and high luminosity near the center of mass of most galaxies.

NSCs are the central massive objects of fainter, low-mass galaxies where supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are not present or are of negligible mass. In the most massive galaxies, NSCs are entirely absent. Some galaxies, including the Milky Way, are known to contain both a NSC and a SMBH of comparable mass.

^(wikipedia)

I imaged this object with my TEC180 refractor with 0.9x flattener installed.   The Camera is a QHY600PH-M with Chroma RGB filters.   I've been playing around with doing just RGB instead of mostly luminance with a little RGB.    The RGB only has given me better colors but I know an L is must more efficient in photon capture, so it's all a tradeoff.    I wish we had more clear skies as I'm data starved.    I captured a total of 9.5 hours of exposures, each 8 minutes long using an extended well depth exposure mode on the camera.