Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Pavo (Pav)  ·  Contains:  HD176340  ·  HD176581  ·  HD176729  ·  HD176967  ·  HD177927  ·  HD178534  ·  HD178767  ·  HD178872  ·  HD179065  ·  IC 4820  ·  NGC 6744
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NGC 6744 - The Great Pavo Spiral, Gabriel R. Santos (grsotnas)
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NGC 6744 - The Great Pavo Spiral

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NGC 6744 - The Great Pavo Spiral, Gabriel R. Santos (grsotnas)
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 6744 - The Great Pavo Spiral

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Description

NGC 6744 is a beautiful spiral galaxy, with a similar morphological type than our own Milky Way [1], albeit larger at ~ 175000 light-years across. It lies some 30 million light-years distant toward the southern constellation Pavo. This island universe’s disk is tilted from our point of view. [2]

The galaxy has a distinct yellow color toward its center – where the light from older and cooler stars shine. In the outer arms, light from blue young stars indicates intense star formation. Some satellite galaxies are also in the frame, revealing some possible gravitational interaction between them. [3]

In the deep field, some very distant background galaxies fill the frame, each an island universe by itself. Some of them are ESO 104-44, ESO 104-43 (both ~ mag 15), IC 4823 (mag 16), IC 4820 and IC 4834.

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This image was acquired with my Newtonian 150mm astrograph, in a cloudless night, but with the moon up. After finishing some targets earlier in the evening, the waning moon decided to show up. At about 1 am, I pointed the telescope to NGC6744, and programmed a sequence until sunrise, hoping to get something acceptable out of the bright sky. When I woke up, I was surprised the camera shot almost 4h of data, without clouds nor guiding errors.

The result surprised me. Despite the bright-ish moon, the galaxy structure was visible in the integration. I was happy the very faint tidal NGC6744A, and lots of faint background galaxies were visible. There’s a lot to improve, especially in the background SNR and the focus, which was a little bit off. Perhaps I will add more data to this target in the following months, but for now I am pleased.

Constructive criticism, comments and suggestions are more than welcome in the comments section. Thank you for taking your time to look at this image!

Date: 28 April 2019

Location: MG, Brazil. Rural Skies (Bortle 3-4, calculated SQM ~21.4)

Camera: Canon EOS T5/1200D (modded), at ISO 1600

Optics: 150/750mm ATM Newtonian Telescope (optics by Sandro Coletti) + TS-Optics MaxField 2" Coma Corrector

Mount: Sky-Watcher HEQ5, tracking, guided

Exposure Detail: 75x180s. Total integration 225min

[1] P. da Silva, J. E. Steiner, and R. B. Menezes, “NGC 6744 - A nearby Milky Way twin with a very low-luminosity AGN,” Jul. 2018.

[2] APOD 2018/08/10

[3] “What do a galaxy's colors mean? Are they its true colors?”, Sara Slater. Ask an astronomer – Cornell University. @ http://curious.astro.cornell.edu

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NGC 6744 - The Great Pavo Spiral, Gabriel R. Santos (grsotnas)