NGC 521 & NGC 533 (Gary Imm)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cetus (Cet) · Contains: IC 1694 · NGC 521 · NGC 533

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NGC 521 & NGC 533

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NGC 521 & NGC 533

This object is a rarely imaged galaxy pair located 220 million light years away in the constellation of Cetus at a declination of +2 degrees. Each galaxy spans about 2 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 130,000 light years. I do not see any visible signs of interaction between these two galaxies, so my feeling is that there are not quite the same distance away from us.

The galaxy on the left is NGC 533, which is an oval elliptical galaxy and the namesake of this NGC 533 galaxy group.

NGC 521 is a beautiful face-on barred spiral. I love the large narrow bar, the delicate spiral arms, the faint dust lanes and star clusters, and the angled Vorontsov-Velyaminov rows on the outside of the galaxy arms.

Tiny background galaxies throughout the image add an interesting perspective to the two primary galaxies, especially to NGC 521 on the right. IC 1694, to the lower right as seen on the mouseover, is particularly interesting. This galaxy is the same distance away but much smaller at only 60,000 light years in diameter. Despite its small size, it is seen to have an interesting structure with 2 oval inner ring regions.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3192170
PixInsight job	ROWCYOVC0SI4DDZHM71AD240KX5Z9GS2
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	01h25m02s.553
RA (top/left)	01h26m01s.487
RA (top/right)	01h23m53s.126
RA (bottom/right)	01h24m03s.511
RA (bottom/left)	01h26m11s.889

Dec (center)	+01°44′42″.37
Dec (top/left)	+01°58′26″.45
Dec (top/right)	+01°54′56″.45
Dec (bottom/right)	+01°30′58″.70
Dec (bottom/left)	+01°34′27″.56

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NGC 521 & NGC 533

NGC 521 & NGC 533

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NGC 521 & NGC 533

NGC 521 & NGC 533

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