NGC 55

This galaxy was discovered in the early 19th century and is a rather small but particularly interesting galaxy in the constellation “Sculptor”. Small, because it is not even half the size of our Milky Way. If you are looking for it, you have to look for an apparent moon size in diameter.

NGC 55 is almost impossible to observe in our evening sky because it is so low in the sky. That’s why the raw image material was again collected by my Australian partner Eric Benson in the outback and processed by me into this image.

At only 4 million light years, NGC 55 is also quite close to us and can easily be observed in a standard telescope. The location should be as far south as possible and no light pollution should impair the view.

The special feature of this galaxy are the so-called “star clusters”, which can be resolved very well photographically. They are recognizable as solitary, highly luminous blue dots, which are particularly concentrated around the core of the galaxy, but also in the periphery. In the background of the image there are quasars appearing as deep red dots several billion light years away.

Here we see the result of 25 hours of total exposure time, divided into 30-minute frames.

This image has also been published by NASA.

Coordinates:
RA: 00h 14m 53,60s
DC: -39° 11′ 47,9″

Exposure time:
30 hours

Award:
NASA (APOD)