The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy • M83 • NGC 5236 (Jason Cropper)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Hydra (Hya) · Contains: M 83 · NGC 5236 · Southern Pinwheel Galaxy

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The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy • M83 • NGC 5236

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The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy • M83 • NGC 5236

The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy - 14.7 million light years from Earth in the constellation of Hydra. That's how long it took for the light to get to my camera.

I captured this galaxy from the evenings of March 26th through March 28th.

The Southern Pinwheel is what is called a 'barred spiral' type galaxy. You can easily see the yellow 'bar' in the core. Coincidentally, so is our own Milkyway. Our galaxy loosely resembles the Southern Pinwheel, but is more than twice its size. The Southern Pinwheel is about 54,000 light years across and is believed to contain about 400-500 million stars/suns.

M83 was discovered by Abbe Nicholas Louis de la Caille at the Cape of Good Hope on February 23, 1752 and was the first outside our Local Group to be cataloged. Despite its very low position for Paris, it was next cataloged by Charles Messier on February 17, 1781 who said: "Nebula without star, near the head of Centaurus: it appears as a faint and even glow, but it is difficult to see in the telescope, as the least light to illuminate the micrometer wires makes it disappear. One is only able with the greatest concentration to see it at all.”

It gets its name from the Pinwheel Galaxy, but is located closer/lower to the horizon most of the night than the Pinwheel which is significantly higher in the Big Dipper constellation as the night progresses. Here in Texas it only gets about 30º above the horizon in the evenings in the springtime---its highest.

124 images taken with an exposure time of 6 minutes each. You can see below in the comments an actual raw image of this one in a trillion galaxies which I hope has life within it.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5698213
PixInsight job	QXMDI30JY23WHRI4TEU9WIG0A4K4XEL5
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	13h37m01s.624
RA (top/left)	13h35m27s.723
RA (top/right)	13h35m33s.216
RA (bottom/right)	13h38m34s.792
RA (bottom/left)	13h38m30s.679

Dec (center)	-29°52′10″.10
Dec (top/left)	-30°16′26″.59
Dec (top/right)	-29°26′59″.38
Dec (bottom/right)	-29°27′49″.35
Dec (bottom/left)	-30°17′17″.20

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The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy • M83 • NGC 5236

The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy • M83 • NGC 5236

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The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy • M83 • NGC 5236

The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy • M83 • NGC 5236

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