The Colossal Condor Galaxy NGC 6872 - with 8.2m VLT comparison
While not a 150hr Rolfathon (still can't believe he did that..amazing) I had a great and enjoyable night Friday night finishing off this galaxy cluster image and fitting in some visual observing under some good dark steady sky conditions .
Located in Pavo and at some 300 Million light years distance, this group of galaxies is a bloody long way away!... and at over 500,000 light years wide, the huge spiral galaxy NGC 6872, quite appropriately known as The Condor Galaxy, is the second largest spiral galaxy known...she's a whopper
Taken over three nights in quite good conditions, the main bodies of these distant galaxies are all quite small (1' to 2') so the reasonably good seeing I enjoyed assisted in revealing some details
Thanks for the comments guys, glad you all liked it
Chris, my observatory is a modest 40min drive form where I live in central Canberra and 10km, as the crow flies, from the edge of the nearest outer Canberra suburb but this puts it under very usable Bortel 3 to 4 skies at 600m ASL
Mike, that is magnificent. There are very faint extensions toward the top of the Condor not visible in the excelllent Capella shot. Uncountably large number of tiny background galaxies. The background is just about noise free. Ripper stuff.
Mike, that is magnificent. There are very faint extensions toward the top of the Condor not visible in the excelllent Capella shot. Uncountably large number of tiny background galaxies. The background is just about noise free. Ripper stuff.
Cheers Mike
Yeah, he he, I just put that Capella shot in to head off Jase's inevitable "need long focal length to do galaxies", comment (sorry Jase)...but quite clearly and provided you have the right sized pixels, one can still produce quite respectable results with just 1120mm focal length on 1 arc min sized galaxies (think Ray aka Shiraz here too), the 24" Hypergraph was operating at 1800mm FL and from a well know high quality observing site. A 24" F3 hypergraph would be just about my dream scope actually...LOTTO
Quote:
Originally Posted by alpal
Nice photo Mike,
it's a very interesting pic - off the beaten track.
nice one Mike, great field I haven't seen too many shots of this.
the obsy looks great too with the milky way hanging low.
Russ
Thanks Russ and yeah I'm lucky to have a half decent site so close to home, best of both worlds. The Zodiacal light was visible in the west for ages on Sun night, right up to the Milky Way overhead
Quote:
Originally Posted by Regulus
That's an excellent result Mike. Enjoying just sitting and looking at this one.
Trev.
Know what you mean Trev, the sense of depth on this one is strong...an amazing universe we live in (but will probably never get any closer too )...
Colossal image indeed Mike An excellent rendition of this fantastic and rarely imaged field. The faint extensions on the Condor look fascinating and there's a nice variety of galaxies all over. It seems like there is some structure near the centre of the giant elliptical too, perhaps some shells? Wonderful work, thanks for the view
Colossal image indeed Mike An excellent rendition of this fantastic and rarely imaged field. The faint extensions on the Condor look fascinating and there's a nice variety of galaxies all over. It seems like there is some structure near the centre of the giant elliptical too, perhaps some shells? Wonderful work, thanks for the view
BTW love the pic of your obs too!
Yeah, interesting field huh? Cheers Rolf
Better watch out too Olsen... that's 15.5hrs mate, hey, I'm catchin ya
Yep, love havin an observatory under dark skies..heaps of fun.
. 
(sorry Jase)...but quite clearly and provided you have the right sized pixels, one can still produce quite respectable results with just 1120mm focal length on 1 arc min sized galaxies 
(think Ray aka Shiraz here too), the 24" Hypergraph was operating at 1800mm FL and from a well know high quality observing site. A 24" F3 hypergraph would be just about my dream scope actually...LOTTO 
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