The Owl Nebula ... Messier 97
(Click on Picture for larger view)

Added March 5, 2019 ...
This deep space object is located approximately 3,000 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major which is high in the NE sky at 10 pm in early March. The nebula is a ghost-like outer shell of gas blown off by a dying star and resembles the face of an owl.

The Techy Stuff:
Mount: Celestron CGX Mount setting and alignment via Celestron PWI software Guiding: Orion StarShoot AutoGuider Pro & 60mm Scope Guiding Software: PHD2 ... (RMS Error: 0.31 px) Camera: Canon T7i (Modified) Filter: None Settings: ISO 1600 at 300-second exposure Total sub-frames: 7 at 300 min ea 30 Dark & Bias frames Capture Software: Backyard EOS Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker at 2X Drizzle Post processing in PixInsight & Photoshop CC Outside temperature 38° at 1 am Bortle Light Pollution zone: 4.5 (Barely can see the Milky Way) Sky Condition: 10 [scale of 0 (cloudy) to 10 (clear)] Location: My Backyard, Savannah, GA

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The Owl Nebula and Messier 108, also known as "The Surfboard Galaxy" (upper right), is a barred spiral galaxy and is seen almost edge-on. It contains about 400 billion stars (as compared with our Milky Way galaxy of 250 billion stars). It is about 45.9 million light-years away. There is a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core and has an estimated mass of 24 million solar masses.

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