Fiddle­head Galaxy (NGC 772) in Aries

NGC 772 is a stun­ning early spir­al sys­tem seen 37° from edge-on. It has sev­er­al thightly coiled arms and one strong, asym­met­ric arm cross­ing the disk west­wards. That one bright arm coils around the nuc­le­us like a fiddle­head unfold­ing, which is why i call it the Fiddle­head Galaxy.

The dis­tance to NGC 772 is about 106 mil­lion lightyears and its dia­met­er is mearly 220’000 lightyears, roughtly twice the dia­met­er of our Milky Way. The bright galaxy lower left is NGC 770 with a dia­met­er of 40’000 lightyears, which is assumed to be a real com­pan­ion of NGC 772 at a dis­tance of about 160’000 lightyears.

[descrip­tion from O’Meara and wikipedia.org]

Details

Tele­scope:
RCOS 14.5″ f/​8
Mount:
ASA DDM85
Cam­era:
SBIG STL-11000M
Fil­ters:
Astro­don Gen2
Expos­ure:
LRGB 590:140:160:140 min.
Loc­a­tion:
ROSA Remote Obser­vat­or­ies South­ern Alps
Author:
© Mar­tin Ruster­holz, Astrophotographer

Find­er Chart Fiddle­head Galaxy (NGC 772) in Aries

NGC 772 Galaxy Sky Chart Astrophotography Martin Rusterholz

Image cre­ated by Skychart

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About Me

Hello, my name is Martin Rusterholz. I’m a Swiss amateur astrophotographer living near Zurich, the biggest town in Switzerland. My interest in astronomy started when I was 16. At that time, I built my first Newtonian telescope and mount. I studied physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) which was the only study including at least some aspects of astronomy and astrophysics. “Looking at the nights sky is an experience touching everybody deeply inside, something common to all human beings independent to the language spoken by the individuals”. Deep-sky astrophotography is my passion.

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