Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Sculptor (Scl)  ·  Contains:  IC 1537  ·  NGC 55
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NGC 55 The String of Pearls Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB, Ian Parr
NGC 55 The String of Pearls Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB
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NGC 55 The String of Pearls Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 55 The String of Pearls Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB, Ian Parr
NGC 55 The String of Pearls Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 55 The String of Pearls Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB

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Description

NGC 55, the String of Pearls Galaxy in Sculptor, also referred to as The Whale Galaxy, is a Magellanic type barred spiral galaxy located about 6.5 million light-years away.
Along with its neighbour NGC 300, it is one of the closest galaxies to the Local Group, probably lying between the Milky Way and the Sculptor Group and it is likely that NGC 55 and NGC 300 form a gravitationally bound pair. It has an apparent magnitude 7.87 and is quite at 32.4 x 5.6 arcminutes.

This combines the best 4 hours data from over 6 hours taken the last two years with a good run into the early hours from last week.

Wow! The latest Pixinsight update fixed some huge issues with performance, like Image Solver times slashed from minutes to seconds, and that performance lift is showing up in other tools so that sort of makes up for the changes to the dialog boxes defaults that really messed around with muscle memory.

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NGC 55 The String of Pearls Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB, Ian Parr