Posted on 07/03/2024 1:32:25 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is known as the Southern Pinwheel for its pronounced spiral arms. But the wealth of reddish star forming regions found near the edges of the arms' thick dust lanes, also suggest another popular moniker for M83, the Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. This new deep telescopic digital image also records the bright galaxy's faint, extended halo. Arcing toward the bottom of the cosmic frame lies a stellar tidal stream, debris drawn from massive M83 by the gravitational disruption of a smaller, merging satellite galaxy. Astronomers David Malin and Brian Hadley found the elusive star stream in the mid 1990s by enhancing photographic plates.
For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.
Just Beautiful!
M51 Galaxy - Estimated to be about 30 million light years from earth. I reprocessed this image and added more recently obtained data to existing data.
M51 Galaxy, or Whirlpool Galaxy, and NGC5195 it's companion above M51. Estimated distance 30 million light years away. Estimated diameter is 76,000 light-years.
It is believed a large black hole resides at the galaxy core. Also barely visible is Galaxy IC 4278, seen as a tiny hazy patch, 3/4 of the way up on the left side of the image.
The Whirlpool Galaxy is the brightest member of the M51 Group, a relatively small group of galaxies that also includes Sunflower Galaxy (M63) and the fainter edge-on spirals NGC 5023 and NGC 5229.
(Messier 51b), a dwarf galaxy connected to its larger neighbor by a tidal bridge of dust. Three supernovae have been observed in M51 to date: SN 1994 in April 1994, SN 2005cs in June 2005, and SN 2011 on May 31, 2011.
75x1mn 30x2mn
RA 13hr 29' 57" DEC 47º 12' 02
Could be how our galaxy looks - are those other galaxies out there as well?
I went and got the large picture of it and now is my desktop image - it’d be great if it was animated, slowly turning with some heavy low key music to go along with it.
Beautiful.
Galactic measles.
What scope and mount do you have? Nice image.
Schmidt Cassegrain. It’s old school, circa 2000. Had to make changes to the privative focus system, issues with mirror shift etc...Homemade permanent concrete pier with the scope being fork mounted to an equatorial platform bolted to the top of the pier. The pier is isolated from the floor...to reduce vibrations etc. Pier and base are sunken and weigh about 1500lbs. I got half the steel from a scrap yard. The cameras, mount and scope can be controlled remotely, which is nice, stay out of the cold weather when imaging etc.
The stars with spikes are foreground stars in our galaxy. The rest are probably galaxies. There are two on the right side of M83 that are close enough to see the shape.
That sounds like a nice setup. I just ordered the Askar 103 f7 700mm. I run an HEQ5 Pro mount. Man I love astrophotography! So many wonders above our heads.
That’s a real nice setup....You should be able to do some great work with that! It’ll be like Christmas when it comes!
Have a SkyWatcher 72 ED doublet that is pretty good, but I wanted something with more reach and better resolution. I also have several high-end Nikon lenses that I shoot with. Recently upgraded to the ZWO 533 Pro Cool camera. Light years better than a DLSR.
Recently discovered the group M83…listen to them before work to motivate me for the day.
Just recently visited planetary nebula M27..
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