Friday May 09, 2008

WCAS Home Membership Contact SCHEDULE Events Meetings Reports RESOURCES Equipment Gallery Resources RSS Members Best viewed using OBSERVATIONS WITH THE FAULKES TELESCOPE (FTN) - NGC 5395 - The Heron Galaxy NGC 5395 and NGC 5394 are two interacting galaxies that collided some millions of years ago. The morphology of the pair suggest that NGC 5394 (the smaller galaxy to the north) passed, cart-wheeling through NGC 5395 as opposed to a grazing encounter. Apparent magnitudes are 13.6 and 12.7 respectively. NGC 5395 has several dark dust lanes, and knotty spiral arms. The companion galaxy NGC 5394 has prominent inner and outer spiral arms. The inner arms appear as a nearly complete central circle. NGC 5395 is roughly 184 million light years distant, and is 155,000 light years in diameter. A supernova, SN2000CR, was detected in NGC 5395 in 2000, at magnitude 17. This has dimmed since then, but is still just visible in the dark lane between the outer two spiral arms, at between 11.0 o'clock and 12 o'clock. A galaxy is just visible at the edge of the image, to the right of NGC 5394. This is an 18 magnitude distant elliptical known as PGC 211092. Brian Thomas. Date: Mar 2007. Filter: Colour Exposure time: 270 secs. Processed by Brian Thomas Date: Jan 2007. Filter: Colour Exposure time: 270 secs. Processed by Robin Waddling using IRIS software. LOCAL SUN/MOON TIMES Click for local weather or local star chart CURRENT MOON PHASE Click for moon phases CURRENT SUN Click for full size