Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Serpens (Ser)
Hoag's Object (PGC 54559), Chris Sullivan
Hoag's Object (PGC 54559)
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Hoag's Object (PGC 54559)

Hoag's Object (PGC 54559), Chris Sullivan
Hoag's Object (PGC 54559)
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Hoag's Object (PGC 54559)

Equipment

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Description

Just seeing what an 8 inch scope can do on an extremely tiny mag 16 galaxy under Bortle 7-8 skies. It's a super interesting target but detail is basically non-existent. EDIT: I forgot to mention that this is the farthest 'main object' I've imaged - it's over 600 million ly away.

While ring galaxies aren’t unknown, Hoag’s Object (PGC54559) is particularly interesting as the older core is perfectly spherical and the ring lacks an arm-like structure. Ring galaxies generally arise through collisions – a smaller galaxy will crash into a spiral galaxy at high velocity pushing stars outwards and leaving an outer ring separated from the remainder of the core. But with the perfectly spherical shape of Hoag’s Object, the complete lack of any trace of a galaxy collision and with the stars in the ring being much younger than the stars in the core, it doesn’t look like it formed that way. It’s on just about every list of the ‘strangest objects in the universe’ and it’s still unknown how a galaxy like this could have formed.

Comments

Revisions

    Hoag's Object (PGC 54559), Chris Sullivan
    Original
    Hoag's Object (PGC 54559), Chris Sullivan
    B
  • Final
    Hoag's Object (PGC 54559), Chris Sullivan
    C

B

Description: Crop

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C

Description: Crop with Hubble image

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Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Hoag's Object (PGC 54559), Chris Sullivan