NGC 289 - 70 million light-years away

This delicate looking galaxy is located in the Sculptor constellation. It is a very large barred spiral, almost 3 times larger than our own Milky Way. The very faint bluish spiral arms are estimated to be 300,000 light-years across.

 

I performed a slight crop on the image as I wanted to retain the feeling of distance from this beautiful galaxy some +70 million light-years away. At this distance, NGC 289 presents the angular dimensions of 5.10 X 3.6 arcmins, a visual magnitude of 11, with a surface brightness of 14.0 mag/arcmin2. This certainly adds to the challenge as the galaxy core small, and its arms are incredibly dim requiring long exposures to reveal them against the background. I really wanted to capture the faint arms and thought I would try 20 min exposures as an experiment in the Luminance channel. I don’t have a data set of 15 min exposures, so I can’t really tell if there is or would be a difference in the end result.

 

Instruments:

10 Inch fl 9.1 RCOS

Astro Physics AP-900 Mount

SBIG STL 11000m

FLI Filter Wheel

Astrodon Lum, Red, Green, Blue Filters

Baader Planetarium H-alpha 7nm Narrowband-Filter

 

Exposure Details:

Lum 41 X 1200

Red 21 X 500

Green 11 X 500

Blue 26 X 500

Ha 21 X 1800

 

Total Exposure: 32.2 Hours

 

 

Done