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Old 30-08-2014, 08:19 PM
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Shiraz (Ray)
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: ardrossan south australia
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NGC6872 - the biggest spiral of them all?

Hi

this group of galaxies was interesting to image - it's pretty low down and decent resolution was not easily available (average for lum was 2.2 arcsec FWHM). The major spiral - NGC6872 - is apparently a giant, about 5x further across than the milky way (ie about 500,000 light years) with possibly as many as 2 trillion stars. It has probably been disrupted by collision with IC4970. The affected arm has been replenished and now hosts new blue star forming regions and a faint throw-off ball of stars that may be a new dwarf galaxy in the making. The colour has not been unduly fiddled with - this seems to be roughly what it would look like through hypersensitive eyes (eg see the much higher res reference image). The other galaxies are probably also worth a look.

full res (0.91 arcsec) cropped:
http://www.astrobin.com/full/117049/D/?real=&mod=


Thanks for looking. Regards Ray

ref see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NG...nd_IC_4970.jpg.
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Last edited by Shiraz; 31-08-2014 at 08:53 AM.
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