One more image from March 2022.
This is an image of a group of galaxies, namely NGC4151, NGC4156, NGC4145, PGC38811, and USNOA2-1275-08046362. They appear in the Hunting Dog constellation (Canes Venatici).
Three of these are most notable:
NGC4145 is the larger spiral galaxy on the lower left side of this image. It is not quite face-on to us. This galaxy is approximately 50 to 70 million light years away from us.
NGC4151 is the larger galaxy on the right side of the image. This spiral galaxy is nearly face-on to us. There are very faint spiral arms reaching out to more than twice the distance of the brighter area. These outer spiral arms are just barely visible. The odd appearance (bright patches on two opposing sides plus the wide arms) have led some to call this galaxy the “Eye of Sauron” - a reference to the “Lord of the Rings” fiction. This galaxy is at approximately the same distance as NGC4145 – they are believed to be interacting.
NGC4156 is the tiny spiral galaxy above and to the left of NGC4151. It may appear small but that is because of its great distance: 310 million light-years away! At such a small size (2 arcminutes in diameter) it has very well defined spiral arms. It is clearly NOT in the same region as the others, just along the same line of sight.
Given the “NGC” names, we know that they were discovered by William Herschel. That was in the year 1787.
This image was captured at Lac Teeples on March 21, 2022 using the RASA11 telescope and the ASI6200 camera. It was produced by stacking approximately one hour of data in the form of one-minute subframes.
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