NGC5364 and friends

[alan4908]

The image below shows a variety of galaxies located in Virgo, the largest three (NGC 5364, NGC 5363 and NGC 5360) are about 50 million light years distant. Fainter galaxies can also be seen in the background which lie at much greater distances, eg the Lenticular galaxy NGC 5373 is estimated to be in excess of 500 million light years distant.  

At the centre of the image is the grand design spiral galaxy NGC 5364. The two spiral arms are seen and contain a large number of bright blue stars. Closer inspection reveals that the arms are asymmetrical and it speculated that this distortion may be due to the gravitational interaction with the companion galaxy NGC 5363, shown near the top centre. This latter galaxy shows a dust lane perhaps created by a past merger. The view of the centre is distorted by the presence of a bright foreground star, close to the core, which is actually within the Milky Way. The smallest of the triplet is the Lenticular galaxy NGC 5360 which does not show any tidal tales.

This LRGB image was acquired by my Esprit 150 and represents about 17 hours integration time.

Alan

 

LIGHTS: L:40, R:23,G:20,B:20 x 600s all at -20C.

[MarsG76]

Awesome details... love it.

[glafnazur]

That's a super image 👍

[ONIKKINEN]

Nice details on galaxies so small. You often go for these smaller ones and seem to pull of a great deal of detail, do you know what sort of fwhm seeing you typically experience when imaging these?

[DrMike]

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Edited July 11, 2023 by DrMike

[DrMike]

Apologies. I posted in wrong area. 

[alan4908]

17 hours ago, MarsG76 said:

Awesome details... love it.

Thanks for the comment ! 

16 hours ago, glafnazur said:

That's a super image 👍

Glad you liked it.

16 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Nice details on galaxies so small. You often go for these smaller ones and seem to pull of a great deal of detail, do you know what sort of fwhm seeing you typically experience when imaging these?

Thanks. 

On the FWHM,  if I take my stacked Lum image and measure the FWHM on a few stars that are on the linear portion of my camera I get around 3.5 pixels FWHM, so given that my imaging resolution is at 0.71 arc seconds per pixel, it suggests an average FWHM of 2.5 arc seconds.  The AI trained deconvolution app BlurXterminator is also very impressive at improving detail. 

Alan