NGC 134 and Companion

Date image was taken: 11/11/2020

Image Title: NGC 134 and Companion

Image Description and Details : This is the spiral galaxy NGC 134 (angular dimensions 8.4 x 1.8 arc minutes) in the constellation of Sculptor. It's apparent size is small so it's not the most photographed spiral galaxy. However, it definitely presents an interesting and beautiful vista with it's companion galaxies, spiral arms and distinct dust lanes. Combined with the bright foreground stars and faint background galaxies, it's as pretty as a picture!

It lies about 60 million light years away in a group of galaxies. NGC 134 is actually larger than the Milky Way, spanning around 150,000 light years. Note the faint extensions on either end which hint at possible gravitational encounters in the past with neighboring galaxies. There are also many HII star forming regions (pink dots) in the spiral arms. At this distance they appear as dots only but up close they would be vast nebulae. We can only imagine that the astro-photographers in that galaxy must be pretty happy with there lot!

The small galaxy to the lower left is NGC 131 and is part of the same galaxy group.

SBIG STXL 11002M, FW8G, AO-X
Officina Stellare ProRC360

This image has been cropped from the full frame for composition purposes.

This is an LLsRGB exposure comprising 18 hours of data (L=360, Ls=180, R=180, G=180, B=180 minutes of exposure)
FOV: 25.5 x 16.8 arcmins @ 0.59 arcsec/pixel

Seeing ranged from good to poor over 4 nights ranging from 2.0 to 3.1 arcsec FWHM across all filters and sub-exposures. Luminance seeing averaged 2.28 arcsec FWHM = average to fair.

Data Acquisition: CCDAutopilot and TheSkyX
Processing: CCDStack and Photoshop

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Copyright Information: Marcus Davies