Discovered by William Herschel on January 14, 1788, NGC 4490 (Arp 269) and NGC 4485 are a pair of interacting spiral galaxies located some 26 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. Although these galaxies are now around 24,000 light-years apart, they are still connected by a trail of stars. NGC 4490, with a magnitude of 9.5, is the larger of the two galaxies and is often referred to as the "Cocoon Galaxy." Telescope: Celestron C8 @ f/8 Accessories: William Optics 0.8x reducer/flattener vII; Dew control by Dew Buster Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G controlled by EQMOD performance tuned by Astrotroniks Guiding: TS-OAG9 Off-axis, using a Starlight Xpress Lodestar via PHD Camera: QHY9-C one-shot color CCD @ -20.0C Filters: Hutech IDAS-LPS-P2 Exposure: 34 x 10min. (5hr. 40min.) Acquisition: Images Plus Camera Control v4.0c Processing: ImagesPlus 4.0 - calibration, align, combine, HDR-DDP Post-processing: Adobe Photoshop CS5; Gradient XTerminator; HLVG; Carboni’s Tools Date(s): April 9, 12 & 13, 2011 Location: Hendersonville, TN, USA