Spiral Galaxy NGC 247 as mosaic in Cetus

NGC 247 is an intermediate spiral galaxy seen nearly edge-on about 11 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus.
NGC 247 is a member of the Sculptor Group and may be bound gravitationally to NGC 253. NGC 247 is marred by an unusually large void on one side (left) of its spiral disk.
This void contains some older, redder stars but no younger, bluer stars. The galaxy has an apparent magnitude of 9.9 but has a low surface brightness of 23.4 mag/arcsec2.

Due to it's relatively close position it is resolved in many single stars und showing nice H-Alpha areas and dust lanes. A huge number of faint and faintest background galaxies can be spotted.

North (lower left) of the main galaxy there is visible a fascinating chain of 4 distant nicely resolved galaxies, called Burbidge's Chain, these galaxies are situated in approx 300 million light years distance.
These are catalogued as following: 
A: ESO 540-25 SBc, Mag 14.7, 1' X 0.8'
B: ESO 540-24 SBbc, Mag 15.7, 0.75' X 0.5'
C: MCG-4-3-12 Type unknown, Mag 17, size 0.5'
D: ESO 540-23 SBb, Mag 14.5, 1' X 0.4'
A faint bridge of matter is visible that appears to connect MCG-4-3-12 to the larger and brighter ESO 540-23

Image data:
2-pane mosaic, each frame LRGB (600-180-180-180 min), Ha 320 min, total 43 h, north is left, seeing 0.8-1.2 arc-sec,
80cm f/7 Astrooptik Keller cassegrain, FLI PL-16803, Astrodon LRGB GenII filters, Prompt 7 CTIO Chile

Processing: Johannes Schedler

Find the slightly cropped image in 20/70% size below and a crop on Burbidge’s chain in 60/100% size at bottom.

click for 70% size

click for 100% size</p

Last modified on Wednesday, 28 March 2018 21:07

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