This is a great group of objects in a tight framing, located in the constellation of Hydra at a declination of -24 degrees. All of the objects are
Astrobin Debut Objects, except NGC 5085 which has one image posted previously.
NGC 5085, at left, is a magnitude 11 near face-on spiral galaxy located 90 million light years away. It spans 3 arc-minutes in our apparent view. This corresponds to a diameter of 90,000 light years. I like the color contrast of the yellow core with the blue star clouds in the arms. The arms are fragmented and hard to trace.
At the center of the image is the elliptical galaxy PGC 46461 and its companion, the spiral galaxy PGC 46464. Both galaxies are about 0.5 billion light years away and are each 80,000 light years in diameter. I like the dark lanes from the spiral galaxy, which appear to be in front of the elliptical. The Hubble image of this object shown in
Revision C shows this clearly.
On the right side of the image is a grouping of 4 objects, led by the closest one, PGC 46423. Like PGC 46461 above, PGC 46423 is also about 0,5 billion light years away. It is an large edge-on spiral galaxy, 170,000 light years in diameter, with an offset core that is peaking out at us above a nice dark dust lane. The other 3 galaxies, 2 spirals to the left and an elliptical to the right, appear to be well into the distant background although their exact distances from us are unknown.
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