NGC 7497 through MBM 54 |
NGC 7497 - Click to view larger image. Opens in a new window. |
| NGC 7497 is a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way galaxy and is seen from our vantage point edge-on. It lies about 60 million light-years away from us in the constellation Pegasus. Its distance makes it a bit tough to capture details of its disk and dust lanes with existing equipment. What adds interest to this part of the sky is the presence of the integrated flux nebula (IFN for short) that lies in our line of sight to the galaxy. This nebula is clouds of interstellar dust that floats about the plane of the Milky Way which reflect the combined light of all the stars in our galaxy! The particular ghostly segments of the IFN captured in this image are part of one cloud catalogued as MBM 54 and lie less than a thousand light-years from us. |
| Object: NGC 7497 shining through MBM 54 |
| Constellation: Pegasus |
| When Visible: September - December |
| Distance: 60 Million Light-years (NGC 7497), 1000 light-years (MBM 54) |
| Date: October 2017 |
| Location: Dark Sky New Mexico near Animas, NM |
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Luminance: 22 x 15 minutes Binned 1 x 1 R: 8 x 15 minutes Binned 1 x 1 G: 8 x 15 minutes Binned 1 x 1 B: 8 x 15 minutes Binned 1 x 1 11 1/2 hours total exposure time |
| Equipment Used: 12.5" PlaneWave CDK on a Software Bisque Paramount ME mount. SBIG STL-6303 camera with 5-position filter wheel, SBIG AO-L and Astrodon LRGB filters |
| Acquisition Software : MaximDL, TheSky6, CCDAutopilot 5 |
| Processing Software: MaximDL, Photoshop CS5, IrFanView, Noel Carboni Actions |