M74 - A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy (Callum Hayton)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Pisces (Psc) · Contains: M 74 · NGC 628

M74 - A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy, Callum Hayton

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M74 - A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy

Link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/80205804@N05/15154811034/

Powered byPixInsight

M74 - A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy

Link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/80205804@N05/15154811034/

Messier 74 is a face on spiral galaxy located between 30-40 million light years away in the constellation Pisces. It contains around 100 billion stars and is about 95,000 light years across making it similar in size to our own galaxy. It is the brightest member of its small local galactic group which is made up of 5-7 other galaxies, but its

low surface brightness makes it one of the hardest Messier objects for visual astronomers to observe, as well as making it a more challenging object to image. M74s face on orientation makes it a great target for professional astronomers to study how spiral arms are formed. Its two well defined arms allow it to be classed as a Grand Design Spiral Galaxy, a category only 10% of spiral galaxies fall into. Using an astronomical phenomena known as Redshift, astronomers have determined M74 is moving away from us at around 400 miles per second.

Redshift can be explained in a very very basic way if you imagine a sound wave. Sound changes in frequency as it moves closer or further away. Light is also a wave and preforms similar to this except instead of changing in pitch we perceive a change in colour. If a object moves rapidly through space towards you it will appear blue and if moving away will appear red. By measuring these slight changes in colour over time astronomers can determine how fast an object is moving. Redshift and blueshift has been used to discover exo-planets, calculate the movement and speed of galaxies, and in 1929 even led Edwin Hubble to the discovery that our universe is expanding - the first piece of the Big Bang Theory and our understanding of the origins of the universe!

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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	411264
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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