Last May I had some cloudless nights and decided to go a bit off the beaten track. Better said than done, as galaxy season was still dominant, I could only photograph from my Bortle 8 sky and my telescope’s focal length is still fairly short.
Nonetheless, I found this set of objects quite interesting and not so often photographed, so decided to give it a go.
This cosmic landscape features NGC 4725 (the largest galaxy), an intermediate barred spiral galaxy with only one arm, giving rise to an interesting ring structure and located at about 40 million light years from us. This galaxy is strongly interacting with its neighbour NGC 4747, also known as Arp 159, the lobated galaxy on the right of NGC 4725. These lobes are tidal tails which indicate this galaxy has suffered strong gravitational interactions somewhere in its past.
Finally, the Longmore-Tritton 5 (aka LoTr5) nebula. It is the object on the upper right corner and it is one of the largest know planetary nebulas. It is located at about 1650 light years. Looking closer, one can observe that this nebula is not round but it is instead a bipolar nebula, thought to be originated by binary stars. It was discovered in 1980, a very special year to me…
Hope you enjoy and let me know what you think about it!
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