More Astrophotography in the Ajo area
January 18, 2018
The Whirlpool Galaxy. I've done this before, many times, but it is one of my
favorite galaxies. Last night I got 95 minute of exposure on it.
I'm going to pull in some of my other subs from last year
and stack them all, but I'm too tired tonight to do that.
It should give around 2.5 hours of exposure when I get
it done. Note the smaller galaxy in the upper right.
M5, a large star cluster in the constellation Serpens. I copied this from
Wikipedia:
Spanning 165 light-years in diameter, M5 is one of the largest
known globular clusters. The gravitational sphere of influence of
M5, (i.e. the volume of space in which stars are gravitationally bound to it
rather than being torn away by the
Milky Way's gravitational pull) has a radius of some 200 light-years. At
13 billion years old, M5 is also one of the
eldest globular clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. Its distance is about 24,500
light-years from Earth, and it
contains more than 100,000 stars, as many as 500,000 according to some
estimates.
This is the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy (M83), another one that is low in the
south.
It is a mere 15 million light-years away, viewed in the constellation
Hydra.