Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Pisces (Psc)  ·  Contains:  NGC 660  ·  PGC 1432913  ·  PGC 1433323  ·  PGC 1433543  ·  PGC 1436430
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NGC 660: Inclined, Twisted, and Warped, Alex Woronow
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NGC 660: Inclined, Twisted, and Warped

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 660: Inclined, Twisted, and Warped, Alex Woronow
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 660: Inclined, Twisted, and Warped

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Description

NGC 660: Inclined, Twisted, and Warped
A.K.A: PGC 6318

OTA: CDK17 f/6.8
Camera: QHY 600
Observatory: Deep Sky West
Date of Capture: Oct, '23
Date of Processing: Nov, '23

Exposures:
R: 12 x 300 sec
G: 13 x 300
B: 13 x 300
L: 52 x 300
Total Exposure time: 7.5 hours
Image Radius: 15 arc-minutes

Processing Tools:
1.    Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz (Studio2), ON1
2.    Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator, Normalize Scale Gradient
3.    My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool (Excel w/ J. Hunt), ColorTweaker

Target Description:
At first glance, this galaxy may look chaotic and without structure. But look again! A canted inner "elliptical" galaxy, viewed almost edge-on, is surrounded by a vertical ring that almost passes over the poles of the inner galaxy. (Hence the name "Polar-Ring Galaxy.) How this came about is not really known beyond the obvious explanation that two galaxies collided about a billion years ago…or, at least, had a very close passage.

BTW, the title of this page comes from the description in the cited reference, which also provides an abundance of discussion covering this unusual character.

Processing Description:
Processing required no special steps, although I would have gladly taken one-quarter as much luminance data for twice as much RGB. L is a fast way to get grayscale detail, but it is information-poor relative to color data; it lacks color information!

Statistics:
Distance: 75M ly
Apparent Magnitude: 12
Pixel Span at Target: 1.1E14 km

Reference: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233618036_Polar_ring_spiral_galaxy_NGC_660

Alex Woronow

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NGC 660: Inclined, Twisted, and Warped, Alex Woronow