I took an image of a galaxy 27 million light years away from us.

I imaged this galaxy from my back garden in 2023 using my one shot colour camera and my light pollution filter and my Skywatcher 200P telescope.

Total Integration time: 9hours 25 min

Moon coverage: 60%

Location: Northern Hemisphere

Bortle: 4

The Sunflower galaxy or Messier 63:

The Sunflower galaxy was discovered in 1779 by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain and was the first of 24 objects that Méchain would contribute to Charles Messier’s catalog. The galaxy is located roughly 27 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. It has an apparent magnitude of 9.3 and appears as a faint patch of light in small telescopes. The best time to observe M63 is during May. Source NASA

Shown below is an image in SkySafari showing the location of M63 in our night sky. Some other objects that lie in the same region of space include the Whirlpool galaxy, and I have also imaged this galaxy.

This was the fourth Messier object I imaged in the summer months of 2023 - I think I managed to get around 10 Messier objects that time. The summer nights were particularly warm with ambient temperatures around 15 or 16 degrees which is actually pretty warm for Scotland, but I soldiered on nonetheless, with my cooled astronomy camera, to try and get more objects from the Messier Catalogue, of which there are 110. See here for the full list.

I hope you enjoy seeing these images.