Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Hydra (Hya)  ·  Contains:  HD91964  ·  HD92036  ·  IC 629  ·  NGC 3307  ·  NGC 3308  ·  NGC 3309  ·  NGC 3311  ·  NGC 3312  ·  NGC 3314  ·  NGC 3316  ·  NGC 3317
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The overlapping galaxies, NGC 3314 in an amazing field of galaxies, Niall MacNeill
The overlapping galaxies, NGC 3314 in an amazing field of galaxies, Niall MacNeill

The overlapping galaxies, NGC 3314 in an amazing field of galaxies

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
The overlapping galaxies, NGC 3314 in an amazing field of galaxies, Niall MacNeill
The overlapping galaxies, NGC 3314 in an amazing field of galaxies, Niall MacNeill

The overlapping galaxies, NGC 3314 in an amazing field of galaxies

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Description

I think NGC 3314 is one of the most amazing sights in all the heavens. Here we see two galaxies with similar apparent sizes, one directly in front of the other. The closer is 117 Mly and the further is 140 Mly away. This was only discovered in 1999! 
The closer galaxy, NGC 3314a is face on and its beautiful spiral structure can be seen so clearly against the illuminated background provided by the more distant galaxy, NGC 3314b. The latter is clearly larger in absolute size such that their apparent diameters are similar despite its greater distance. NGC 3314b is also a spiral galaxy but it is much closer to edge-on. I measured its tilt angle at approximately 75 degrees, where 0 degrees is face-on and 90 degrees is edge-on. i.e. it is only 15 degrees from edge-on.
The wide field image shows just how small this pair of overlapping galaxies is. They are just right of centre.
I had no end of trouble processing this one, as I had terrible reflections from the two bright stars in the image. Revision A, with the stars removed, shows this pretty well. That is ugly I think you'll agree. You can see the annular ring shape is the same as that of the mirror and this is a problem I face whenever there are really bright stars in the FOV. I had to do some hard work to remove these reflections and I am pretty happy with the result.
There are so many galaxies in this image. Revision C is an annotated version and many of the smaller galaxies are marked in green.
The other interesting and beautiful galaxy is NGC 3312, which is below and to the left of NGC 3314 in the image. Even though I did not capture Ha, I did at one stage create a red mask and noticed that there were some bright "red" areas in the galaxy, which I presume is Ha emission. I enhanced this area with the red mask to bring that out. These galaxies are all too far away for my Ha filter to work, since the Ha emission will have been red shifted out of the narrowband filter range. NGC 3312 is nearly 200 Mly away so given that it is at least twice the apparent size of NGC 3314 and upwards of twice the distance it must be 3 or 4 times larger in actual diameter. 
I zoomed in to the area where most of the action is taking place (Revision D) and this can be accessed via the mouseover.
I then zoomed right in on NGC 3314 and rotated it 180 degrees to make a comparison with the Hubble image of same. My image comes nowhere near the astonishing resolution of Hubble but it is pleasing to see the correlation. The comparison can be seen in Revision E.

Comments

Revisions

  • Final
    The overlapping galaxies, NGC 3314 in an amazing field of galaxies, Niall MacNeill
    Original
    The overlapping galaxies, NGC 3314 in an amazing field of galaxies, Niall MacNeill
    B
    The overlapping galaxies, NGC 3314 in an amazing field of galaxies, Niall MacNeill
    C
    The overlapping galaxies, NGC 3314 in an amazing field of galaxies, Niall MacNeill
    D
    The overlapping galaxies, NGC 3314 in an amazing field of galaxies, Niall MacNeill
    E

B

Description: A starless image showing the reflection artefacts that had to be dealt with in processing.

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C

Description: Annotated image

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D

Description: Zoomed in version

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E

Description: A comparison of NGC 3314 in this image (right) with the Hubble Space Telescope image (left)

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The overlapping galaxies, NGC 3314 in an amazing field of galaxies, Niall MacNeill