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 This
            bright galaxy has a brilliant core region, surrounded by a very
            faint blue halo of material. At 9.6 magnitude and a huge 8 arc
            minutes across, this ranks as one of the best galaxies in the
            sky to shoot. However as usual there is a catch - situated at
            the celestial equator in Cetus, it is often too low in the horizon
            haze to photograph satisfactorily. At our latitude of 34N, this
            is not a problem, and M77 rides high on the meridian on cold
            December evenings. There are two other interesting objects in
            this field of note. To the right of the galaxy near the edge
            is MAC 0241+0000, a inclined spiral of 16th magnitude. Just to
            the upper left near the bright orange star is MAC 0243+0005,
            a 17.0 magnitude object that is inclined to our line of sight
            as well.
Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
Platform:  Astrophysics 1200 QMD
CCD Camera:  SBIG ST8i NABG with Enhanced Cooling
Guider: SBIG ST4
Exposure:  LRGB = 60:20:20:40 (RGB Binned 2x2)
RGB Combine Ratio:  1: .8: 1.2
Filters:  RGB Tricolor
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing FWHM = 5.0 arcsec (Maxim DL - 10min subframe), Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  -5 C
CCD Temperature:  -20 C
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL,  Photoshop, AIP4WIN, PW Pro, RW Debloomer, PixInsight
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