Galaxies, Stars and Dust

APOD comes up today with this beautiful composited view of this small portion of the sky in the Pegasus constellation.



Details with the NGC 7497 galaxy:

Spiky stars and spooky shapes abound in this deep cosmic skyscape. Its well-composed field of view covers about 2 Full Moons on the sky toward the constellation Pegasus.

Of course the brighter stars show diffraction spikes, the commonly seen effect of internal supports in reflecting telescopes, and lie well within our own Milky Way galaxy. The faint but pervasive clouds of interstellar dust ride above the galactic plane and dimly reflect the Milky Way's combined starlight.

Known as high latitude cirrus or integrated flux nebulae they are associated with molecular clouds. In this case, the diffuse cloud cataloged as MBM 54, less than a thousand light-years distant, fills the scene. Other galaxies far beyond the Milky Way are visible through the ghostly apparitions, including the striking spiral galaxy NGC 7497 some 60 million light-years away. Seen almost edge-on near the center of the field, NGC 7497's own spiral arms and dust lanes echo the colors of the Milky Way's stars and dust.

The full 6.5Mb picture can be downloaded here for those who would like to have a brand new desktop background

Technical data:

Object: NGC 7497, MBM 54
Instrument: Telescope ASA de 510 mm.
Focal: 1.794 mm. F3,52.
Monture: DDM85LS.
CCD: STL11000XM.
Exposure: L 102x 400″ (1×1) @ -15ºC, R 34 x 400″ (1×1) , G 21 x 400″ (1×1), B32 x 400″ (1×1) @ -15ºC.
Filters: LRGB Optec.
Guidance system: Internal Sensor STL.
Localization: Centre of Cala d'Hort, Ibiza Astronomical Association (Baleares).

Source

The Universe is so incredibly big and beautiful, complex and mysterious, I just don't know what to say
thanks for the share 11august.

That's great..looks like wolves amongst the galaxies.

Its my ultimate dream of visiting these places - I always imagine a machine like the one out of the movie Contact, which speeds you through space to all these beautiful places! I can wish, right?

Only if our main objective was conquering new horizons and not just war, we may of been able to witness this with our own eyes. I can only hope that my grandchild's will one day have this possibility.

Beautiful, thanks for sharing

Amazing photo, and it's going straight to my desktop. The extra-special thing about this photo is that the interstellar dust here is illuminated by the whole Milky Way galaxy.