December 9, 2017
NGC 288 and the Sculptor Galaxy. I've imaged the Sculptor Galaxy before but never have
had NGC 288 in the frame too. Of course, everything you see in this image is in our galaxy except for the Sculptor Galaxy. NGC 288 is a globular star cluster in the constellation Sculptor. Its visual appearance was
described by John Dreyer in 1888.
A tighter crop of the Sculptor Galaxy (and rotated). It is a mere 11.5 million light years from us.
This was an interesting image to take. In the lower left is NGC 1398, an isolated barred spiral galaxy exhibiting a double ring structure. It is located 65 million light years from the Earth, in the constellation of Fornax. The galaxy has a diameter of 135,000 light years and is slightly larger than the Milky Way. Over 100 billion stars are in the galaxy. The blue object in the upper right is the Robin's Egg Nebula, NGC 1360. It is a planetary nebula, but I have never seen one with this brilliant blue color. It is only a little over 1000 light years away.
A tighter crop of the Robin's Egg Nebula. It never rises much more than 30 degrees above the south horizon so I have lots of atmosphere to deal with, but I think it came out pretty good. It is easy to see how it got its name.
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