Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Cetus (Cet)  ·  Contains:  NGC 1042  ·  NGC 1052
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NGC 1042 and NGC 1052, Gary Imm
NGC 1042 and NGC 1052, Gary Imm

NGC 1042 and NGC 1052

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 1042 and NGC 1052, Gary Imm
NGC 1042 and NGC 1052, Gary Imm

NGC 1042 and NGC 1052

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Description

This pair of objects is located 60 million light years away in the constellation of Cetus at a declination of -8 degrees.

The star of the show here is NGC 1042 at lower right.  This magnitude 11 spiral galaxy spans 5 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of almost 100,000 light years.  The Hubble mosaic image is shown in the mouseover.  This galaxy is a somewhat disturbed grand spiral.  Numerous blue star clouds and pink HII regions are seen throughout the arms of the disk.  These arms start at some distance from the yellow core. 

At upper left is NGC 1052.  This 10.5 magnitude elliptical galaxy spans 3 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 60,000 light years.

The distant galaxies seen in the halo of NGC 1052 are much further away, between 1 and 2 billion light years from us. 

Although these 2 objects are roughly the same distance away from us, I don’t see signs of significant gravitational interaction between them.  They are likely several million light years apart.

The framing is a bit too tight here, but I wasn't in the mood to recalibrate my setup in order to add the reducer.

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