Superman Galaxy
Caldwell 44, The Superman Galaxy
Galaxy season ended back in June but interesting star cities can still be seen at this time of year.
I’ve always wanted to try for C44 but there’s a catch. It’s much farther than most galaxies. Our closest neighbors, Andromeda and Triangulum are both about 2.5 million light years away. Bode’s galaxy is 12 million, Pinwheel 21 and the Whirlpool Galaxy is 31 million light years distant. Superman, by comparison, is a whopping 110 million light years from us and it's moving away faster than a speeding bullet!
To capture it, I paired the Celestron 8” (reduced to f7) and the QHY Minicam8 with its tiny pixels. This combo netted an image scale of just .42 arcseconds per pixel.
It took four very damp nights to capture the data for this picture.
Superman Galaxy
Caldwell 44, The Superman Galaxy
Galaxy season ended back in June but interesting star cities can still be seen at this time of year.
I’ve always wanted to try for C44 but there’s a catch. It’s much farther than most galaxies. Our closest neighbors, Andromeda and Triangulum are both about 2.5 million light years away. Bode’s galaxy is 12 million, Pinwheel 21 and the Whirlpool Galaxy is 31 million light years distant. Superman, by comparison, is a whopping 110 million light years from us and it's moving away faster than a speeding bullet!
To capture it, I paired the Celestron 8” (reduced to f7) and the QHY Minicam8 with its tiny pixels. This combo netted an image scale of just .42 arcseconds per pixel.
It took four very damp nights to capture the data for this picture.