Image 1: NGC5371 and Hickson 68 galaxy grouping (full image 3 by 4.5 degrees). NGC5371 is just above centre.
Image 2: NGC5371 and Hickson 68 galaxy group and field of galaxies (zoomed in version). NGC5371 is near the top right.
Image 3: Hickson 68 galaxy group and field of galaxies (zoomed in further)
On the night of May 6/7 (2024) my assistant Astro and I were able to get the telescope running, with clear skies above. There was a long gap between observations due to travel, bad weather and the arrival of Astro on the scene.
The telescope was the RASA-8, which I wanted to use to capture wider field images (with a full-frame camera). The wide field means that some detail in the images is lost.
In particular we observed some galaxy clusters. The image here is of the barred spiral galaxy NGC5371 and an associated cluster of galaxies called “Hickson compact group 68” (NGC5350, 5355, 5354, 5353, 5358). The image has a huge number of galaxies easily discernable in it. The second and third images are zoomed in to see more features and more of these small galaxies. In the middle image I can count 13 galaxies quite easily.
The Hickson group and NGC5371 are about 150 million light years away. The apparently largest galaxy here is NGC5371 and it is only 4.4 by 3.5 arcminutes in angular size. This galaxy is smaller than the Milky Way, around 10^11 solar masses. That is, this galaxy has around 100 billion times the mass of our sun.
The full image is 3 by 4.5 degrees and we are looking in the constellation Canes Venatici (hunting dogs). The galactic latitude, a measure of how much we are looking away from the disk of the Milky Way, is 71 degrees - well away from the local stars and dust. This is a good clear shot of the distant universe.
NGC5371 and Hickson 68, Lac Teeples, 2024-05-07. 104 minutes of data in 64 second subframes. Celestron RASA-8, ASI6200MC. No filter.
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