Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Maffei I - II, Lorenzo Siciliano
Maffei I - II
Powered byPixInsight

Maffei I - II

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Maffei I - II, Lorenzo Siciliano
Maffei I - II
Powered byPixInsight

Maffei I - II

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

Hi all.
This pair of galaxies lies just on the galactic equator, in Cassiopeia, near the Heart and Soul nebulas.
They were discovered in 1968 by the italian astronomer Paolo Maffei, who took pictures with a IR sensitive photographic plate.
Indeed, these galaxies are heavily obscured by the dust of our Galaxy, so they are apparent in IR light and barely discernible in the visible part of the spectrum.
Maffei I is a subgiant elliptical galaxy. Maffei II is a barred spiral galaxy. They are located at about 10 million light years from us.
In the past, I already took some pictures of Maffei II using my old good C11, the Sbig ST8 and a Johnson-Cousins Ir filter (you can see it in my gallery).
This time, I shooted at the whole pair, using a newton 200 f/4, my ASI 294MM and a ZWO IR850 filter, and I caught some nice details, like the dust lanes around the Maffei I nucleus and interesting detail in the spiral arms of Maffei II.

Ciao.
Lorenzo

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

Maffei I - II, Lorenzo Siciliano