This object is a
low surface brightness (LSB) galaxy located 18 million light years away in the constellation of Triangulum at a declination of +29 degrees. This magnitude 12 galaxy spans 6 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 30,000 light years.
Unlike most of my images where north is up, north is to the left here. The "north is up" orientation for this object results in a vertical galaxy. I find a vertical galaxy orientation to be more difficult to interpret visually.
Blue star clusters are seen through the midsection of this galaxy. Although not terribly interesting visually, I find the lack of older stars and dust bands to be fascinating. It seems like we are looking at a loose spiral edge-on, based on the definition of the bright central section, but the large width is unusual.
The interesting spiral ring galaxy at lower right is PGC 7678 (2MASX J02012654+2844035). Interestingly, it is the same actual size as NGC 784, but 10x further away at 240 million light years.
Comments