Took a break from my obsessive Mars imaging last night. 
Wow! Who knew there are still galaxies out there?
Never really thought to try this before but last night I decided to try and find M87 using old style setting circles. The galaxy was barely visible (my skies, like most, are definitely worse lately) but since I had the Nikon D750 setup previously for a few shots of M51 I exchanged it for the eyepiece and took three quick exposures before calling it quits due to a long day.
This was 20 seconds at 2000 ISO using prime focus of the Lurie-Houghton 9.8" f/4.6. This one wasn't very well focused but it had the least tracking error so it's the one I worked on. The other two had similar detail.
I cropped it and used Gimp to adjust the exposure and contrast - since it's only one 20 second exposure there's not a lot to do with the noise and limited data. I was just surprised that I was able to see the jet in such a quick photo!
Also cropped and arrowed a couple of small, barely visible galaxies that are nicely visible in more advanced images.
Mike Spooner
