I’ve been trying to find this since Sep 4th 2011! This goes to demonstrate the problem of face on spiral galaxies having all their light spread out over a wide area – in my skies they are near invisible. In-fact, I still couldn’t find it this evening, but with some trial and error and some mighty fine chart reading (if I do say so myself!) I found it with the camera.
This I think is beautiful. The arms are delicate, loosely wound and wide flung with interesting brighter spots within. They can be traced quite long distances out, albeit faintly (click photo to enlarge). Succeeding with this gives me renewed energy to try and find M33 in Triangulam – another wispy type Sc (loosely wound) spiral. It’ll be a while before that makes an appearance in the skies though (late summer).
There are 3 other galaxies visible in the photo – I’m guessing these are spiral as well. NGC 5477 just to the left and then NGC 5485 and NGC 5473 towards the top left.
The image is a composite of 28 exposures, 24 for 90 seconds and 4 for 120 seconds, giving 44 mins exposure time.
