NGC 3621 Galaxy in Hydra

NGC 3621 is a field spiral galaxy about 22 Million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra (The Sea Snake).
It is comparatively bright and can be well seen in moderate-sized telescopes. The galaxy is around 93,000 light-years across and is inclined at an angle of 25° from being viewed edge on. It shines with a luminosity equal to 13 billion times that of the Sun. The morphological classification is SA(s)d, which indicates this is an ordinary spiral with loosely wound arms. There is no evidence for a bulge. Although it appears to be isolated, NGC 3621 belongs to the Leo spur. This galaxy has an active nucleus that matches a Seyfert 2 optical spectrum, suggesting that a low mass supermassive black hole is present at the core. Individual stars can be resolved within this galaxy.
The small face-on spiral galaxy in the upper part of the image is PGC 34490 shining at mag 16 in a distance of 438 million light-years.

Image data:
LRGB (500-160-160-160 min) total 17 h, north is left, seeing 0.8-1.1 arc-sec
80cm f/7 Astrooptik Keller cassegrain, FLI PL-16803, Astrodon LRGB GenII filters, Prompt 7 CTIO Chile

Processing: Johannes Schedler

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Last modified on Tuesday, 02 May 2017 23:05

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