Sunday 16 September 2012

Season two of the galaxies

In autumn, our planet's orbit takes us into such a position that looking away from the sun is out of the plane of the Milky Way. Spring is the best galaxy season, but season 2 of the galaxies is autumn, when we look out toward the galactic south. The milky way appears to roll around from South-North to East-West for northern hemisphere observers. In this vast blackness, in the constellation Pegasus are galaxies NGC 7479 and NGC 7814. The former is located below the bottom right star of the Square of Pegasus and the latter just inside the Square's lower left corner star. 7479 has amazingly wide spiral arms, and 7814 is as exact and edge on view as I've seen, but it was not possible to see the division visually in the 20" scope. For 7479 I stacked 35 30 second shots and for 7814 I stacked 14.

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