Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  NGC 3310
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Starburst Galaxy NGC 3310 - Arp 217. ., astroeyes
Starburst Galaxy NGC 3310 - Arp 217. .
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Starburst Galaxy NGC 3310 - Arp 217. .

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The image I'm posting today is NGC 3310, which incidently is an Arp galaxy, Arp

217. Known as 'the Bow and Arrow' galaxy, it's quite easy to see why it has this

title. It is not an easy object, despite it's deceptive magnitude of 11.0! It's

surface brightness is a not too faint 13.3, so I don't really know why it was so

difficult. This image is the sum of 10x2min, 10x3min, 10x4min and 8x5min

exposures - that is 130mins, easily the longest exposure I have given any

subject.

Roughly 100 million years ago, NGC 3310 collided with a smaller galaxy causing

the large spiral galaxy to light up with a tremendous burst of star formation.

The changing gravity during the collision created density waves that compressed

existing clouds of gas and triggered massive star-formation. The Hubble Space

Telescope was used to find the ages of many of the resulting clusters of stars

and to the surprise of many, some of the clusters are quite young, indicating

that starburst galaxies may remain in star-burst mode for quite some time. NGC

3310 spans about 50,000 light years, lies about 50 million light years

away.(ref. APOD)

I hope you enjoy viewing it as much as I enjoyed imaging it!

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Starburst Galaxy NGC 3310 - Arp 217. ., astroeyes