Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Sculptor (Scl)  ·  Contains:  IC 1537  ·  NGC 55
NGC55 - Whale Galaxy - Caldwell 72, John Bradshaw
NGC55 - Whale Galaxy - Caldwell 72
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NGC55 - Whale Galaxy - Caldwell 72

NGC55 - Whale Galaxy - Caldwell 72, John Bradshaw
NGC55 - Whale Galaxy - Caldwell 72
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NGC55 - Whale Galaxy - Caldwell 72

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NGC55  alias The Whale Galaxy, the String of Pearls (James O'Meara's label), Caldwell 72, Bennet 1 (if you are a South African), and (James) Dunlop 507 (he discovered it before 1827 from Paramatta, Sydney (when the sky was a lot darker!!!!)). Not a great picture -- I didn't do any Ha and any attempt to pump up red did not match the red spots in better photos so were probably artefacts. It must be a hard photo at the best of times because I could only find 4 top picks of this subject and no image of the day on astrobin over the last couple of years. Having said that, hats off to  http://astrobin.com/tfqvoj  Lee Borsboom did a good job with 19 hours exposure with an 8"newtonian. Also https://www.astrobin.com/oh7m1q/I/ (5 hours with a 14" f5).But I wanted to photograph it because of its assymetry. Why is it so assymetrical?The answer is fascinating. Its apparently classified as a "Magellanic barred spiral galaxy", which apparently means IT ONLY HAS ONE ARM! (Classified type SBm).(The Large Magellanic Cloud is the archetypal one of this class (also SBm)).Half way between a spiral and a dwarf and presumably showing signs of damage from interaction with other galaxies. (NGC300 is thought to be gravitationally bonded to it but it is about as perfect a grand design as you could ask for so I doubt its the culprit.)I had to look hard for a good photo of the LMC to convince myself but https://www.astrobin.com/285694/ shows it pretty well with blue star formation areas along the arm;  but there were some photos that suggested two arms eg https://www.astrobin.com/328247/The Wikipedia article shows some good candidates though for the class although again most are one arm dominant rather than one-armed  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellanic_spiral.Stephen O'Meara's drawing in his book "The Caldwell Objects" makes it look like a spiral with dark bands. (p 282). Auke Slotergraaf on the other hand writes that we are looking at one end of the bar and one end of a spiral arm and the other arm is hidden in dust. Quattro 8", ZWO178MM-C, OAG guiding, ASIAR, EQ6Pro, zwo filters and SW coma corrector 6/10/2021LRGB  L 60x1s + 100x30s ; RGB 30x120s each - 4h40m total (gain 270x, -5degC)

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NGC55 - Whale Galaxy - Caldwell 72, John Bradshaw