Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Draco (Dra)  ·  Contains:  NGC 5963  ·  NGC 5965
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ngc 5965, astroeyes
ngc 5965
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ngc 5965

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
ngc 5965, astroeyes
ngc 5965
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ngc 5965

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Description

NGC 5963 (bottom) and NGC 5965 (top) are two spiral galaxies in the northern constellation of Draco, not actually related but still making a pretty pairing.

NGC 5963, the nearly face-on spiral, is around 40 million light-years away from Earth. It has a bright core with dust lanes and extraordinarily faint blue spiral arms which extend some distance out from the bright core and not readily seen in my image.

The arms are blue because they are dominated by young blue bright stars. They are so faint because there just aren't that many stars in the arms yet, though there is probably a lot of star formation going on.

NGC 5965 is much more distant at about 150 million light-years away from Earth, so it must be a pretty large galaxy. This galaxy has a very obvious bulge and a dust lane is also clearly seen.

My image, taken on a good night in July, consists of around 45 x 120 sec exposures. I seem to have settled on 120 sec subs for now, that seems to give me a reasonable S/N ratio without skyglow becoming too obvious.

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ngc 5965, astroeyes