Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Boötes (Boo)  ·  Contains:  NGC 5934  ·  NGC 5935  ·  NGC 5943  ·  NGC 5945  ·  NGC 5947
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NGC 5945 Galaxy Group, Gary Imm
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NGC 5945 Galaxy Group

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 5945 Galaxy Group, Gary Imm
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NGC 5945 Galaxy Group

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Description

This object is a group of galaxies located 250 million light years away in the constellation of Bootes. Most of the galaxies in this group show signs of gravitational interaction. The full resolution view is necessary to see many of the details described below.

The largest galaxy is the beautiful barred spiral ring galaxy NGC 5945. I love the structure of this galaxy - a bright core and a long bar, with arms that spiral out from each end of the bar for 180 degrees and form a perfect circle. At the end of each galaxy arm, star streams fill an oval shape which encompasses the galaxy. The stream is most pronounced on the upper right side. Bright blue star clusters are evident on the lower side of the right arm. The ring of this galaxy is one arc-second in diameter which corresponds to a diameter of 70,000 light years.

NGC 5943 is the galaxy almost 10 arc-minutes below the galaxy above. The structure of this galaxy looks like a disturbed elliptical galaxy to me, with extended star streams that my image did not fully capture. To the lower left is a striking barred spiral galaxy (NGC 5947) with numerous Vorontsov-Velyaminov rows in the galaxy arms, and below are two galaxies (PGC 055238 and UGC 9873) whose structures also look disturbed to me.

On the right side of the image is the galaxy pair NGC 5934 and NGC 5945. Both galaxies have interesting structures that are tantalizingly out of reach of my optics to resolve clearly. Both of these galaxies also have faint star streams which extend out from each disk. Just to the left of this pair is a faint cluster of 14 galaxies which are located almost 4 billion light years away.

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