I really had my sights on M104, the Sombrero, since I never could get there from my previous spot in Western Mass. Between the weather and the 70 foot pines blocking the southern sky, it was impossible. Here it is definitely possible and there are no physical barriers to the view, but to the south there is a light dome from El Paso, and after testing it out I was running into issues with plate solving there (see last post). It looks like I will have to wait until I have more time. We are going to be moving to a permanent spot up the street from here and in the next month we will get the high winds and dust everyone is warning me about! I will have to take my gear down and put it away until probably late April/May. In the meatime I have time for 1 more project and happened to come across this galaxy just to the west of Leo’s head. NGC 2903 is surprisingly large, 12 arc minutes in diameter and is perfectly positioned right now, rising just before sunset. Basically it looks like a smaller version of M81 with a more interesting core! I’m surprised I never saw it before. Of course, as always we are going to go deep with it and hopefully will get at least 30-40 hours in over the next couple of weeks. I started off with about an hour and a half of red and luminance before some clouds came through.

NGC 2903
12 minute raw uncalibrated luminance frame. Note the bloomed star image in the upper left. I thought I was going to do photometry at some point so I went with the non antiblooming camera. Also the curved streak in the lower left is junk on the chip glass and unfortunately NOT a newly discovered galactic tidal tail!