The Sombrero Galaxy, M104, is a spiral galaxy in Virgo viewed almost edge on. It features a prominent dust lane and halo of stars suggestive of its namesake. It's only 9x4 arc minutes in apparent size, so it is a bit of a stretch for my focal length of 250 mm. Transparency was poor Friday night with high thin clouds and dust in Fort Davis. Imaging time was limited to just over two hours, 25 five minute exposures starting 2022-04-30 05:48 UT.

This rendering of my data is improved in resolution and controlling bright star bloat. Drizzle integration in Pixinsight improved resoluton quite a bit. Enouigh that star extraction with StarXTerminator worked well on the stretched image. I was able to creat a bright star mask which allowed stretching of the star image without excessive bloating of the large stars.

Imaged with a William Optics RedCat 250/51mm telescope, Baader UV/IR cut filter, ZWO ASI 533 MC camera, and SkyWatcher AZ-EQ5 mount, ASI EAF and guide camera. All were controlled with a ZWO ASIAir Plus Controller. Processed in PixInsight, StarXTerminagor, Topaz DeNoise, and Photoshop.

My ariginal rendering of this data.