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| Hockey Stick and Whale Galaxies | |||||||||||||||||||
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| On the right of this image, the Whale Galaxy (NGC 4631) is a large spiral galaxy, similar in size to our own Milky Way, but seen edge-on. At a distance of 25 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici, this whale certainly is "taking the long way home." A smaller elliptical galaxy, NGC 4627 appears to float on the back of the whale. On the left side of the image lies another distorted galaxy, the hockey stick-shaped NGC 4656. All three galaxies appear deformed by their gravitational interaction. This image combined 2 hours of Luminence exposures with 30 minutes of green and red and 25 minutes of blue exposures, using an ST10XME camera through a TEC140 refractor. This photo was published in the November 2005 issue of Astronomy magazine. Three years later from the Hidden Lake Observatory, I took a closeup view of the Whale Galaxy with a larger telescope, as shown on the next page. |
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| Music: Take the Long Way Home, by Supertramp | |||||||||||||||||||
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