NGC 4603 and a host of other galaxies in Centaurus (Niall MacNeill)

NGC 4603 and a host of other galaxies in Centaurus

My friend Rodney Watters was imaging galaxy clusters in Centaurus and showed me his wide field image of the area. I was gobsmacked at the number and breadth of galaxy types visible in his image. He suggested it would be interesting for me to compose an image for my set up using his image as a template, looking for a nice composition and range of galaxies. My rig has a much smaller image scale and of course FOV, so the idea was to get more detail on the galaxies I selected. I did just that. I felt that framing the image to incorporate the lovely spiral galaxy NGC 4603 and the splendid face on unbarred spiral NGC 4622 would give two focal points to the image.

NGC 4603 is a 107 million ly away and was the subject of a study of the HST to find Cepheid variable stars and measure its distance with some accuracy. The good correlation with its red shift help validate the efficacy of the latter method. At the time it was the most distant galaxy where Cepheid variable stars were used to determine a galaxy's distance.

NGC 4622 is one of my favourite galaxies. Its beautiful spiral structure is so perfect but apparently backwards. The direction of rotation of the galaxy is such that the tips of the spiral arms point towards the direction of the disk rotation. It is ~ 200 million ly distant.

I have featured these two in close up with the mouseover, as well as the spiral galaxy PGC 46240 and NGC 4601 which is described as a lenticular galaxy but it looks like a spiral to me.

There is a myriad of other galaxies in the field of view as another reminder of the enormity of the Universe.

These are the most distant galaxies i have imaged intentionally.

Original
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Description: Annotated version

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E

Description: Close up featuring 4 of the major galaxies in the image

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4531561
PixInsight job	VKOY1UCKCOX7QBHWM5WISO2IZZ75HD5Q
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	12h41m36s.805
RA (top/left)	12h40m17s.568
RA (top/right)	12h42m58s.746
RA (bottom/right)	12h42m55s.120
RA (bottom/left)	12h40m15s.187

Dec (center)	-40°51′18″.67
Dec (top/left)	-41°07′16″.70
Dec (top/right)	-41°06′42″.12
Dec (bottom/right)	-40°35′18″.71
Dec (bottom/left)	-40°35′50″.25

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