NGC 247

NGC 247 is actually quite a small galaxy in the southern night sky and, like Jonah or Pinoccio, is located in the whale. More precisely, in the much larger constellation “Whale”.

This galaxy was discovered back in 1784 by astronomer and musician William Herschel. It is part of the Sculptor group of galaxies (which also includes the two galaxies NGC 253 and NGC 55) and is therefore close to the so-called Local Group, to which our Milky Way also belongs.

Close means that the galaxy NGC 247 is only around 10 million light years away from us, so we can also see many details in its “body interior”. We can see many small pink regions. These are hydrogen clouds in which new stars are being formed. Some people are familiar with similar regions from the well-known Orion Nebula, which is located just around the corner in our galaxy at around 1,350 light years
. We also see bright blue regions, which are highly active young and hot groups of stars.

In this image, in addition to NGC 247, we can see several other galaxies that are even further away and therefore appear small.

The fact that we can see so much detail in this photo is not only due to the relative proximity of NGC 247 to us, but again due to the excellent images taken by Eric Benson in the Australian desert. The photo is based on a total of 30 hours of exposure time, divided into about 100 individual frames in 4 color groups.

This photo was published as the “Astronomy Picture of the Day” by NASA.

Coordinates:
RA: 00h 45m 46,4s
DC: -15° 35′ 49″

Exposure time:
33 hours

Award:
2x NASA (APOD)