I was fortunate to make a trip to an observatory north of Huntsville, TX, to meet a few friends and do some imaging. I took my youngest son with me, and we camped. The sky was hazy until 11:30, but I was anxious to do some imaging, so while waves of mild haze passed overhead, I took five 1800" frames of M63. When it was over, I wasn't sure if I'd have anything, but this is more than I would get at home. So light pollution at home v. intermittent haze at a much darker site? Haze and darkness win.
M63 is about 29 million light years away in the constellation Canes Venatici.
You can see a real time warp in this image. The bright star superimposed over the galaxy is HD 115270, just 3,300 light years away. M63 is 8,790x further away, at 29 million light years. A fuzzy spot seemingly hovering within the left back curve of M63 (which we see only through M63's spiral arm) is PGC 4018103, a galaxy 1.2 billion light years. That is 41x further than M63 and a lot older.
Other highlights include
- in the far upper left, PGC 2197647, 1.1 billion light years away;
- the pair PGC 2196920 and 2196677, 920 million light years away, visible just above the bright red star above and to the right of M63;
- PGC 2187167, 1.1 billion light years away at about 5 o'clock and one galaxy length away from M63; and
- 2MASX J13145076+4142467, which is an elliptical at the far bottom right. This last galaxy has a redshift-based distance of about 600-650 million light years.
No comments:
Post a Comment