Thursday, October 19, 2017

aimed into Hickson 10 (Halifax)

Positioned BGO on star on GSC0230001449 in the middle of the galaxy cluster Hickson 10 in Andromeda.

galaxy cluster Hickson 10 in luminance

Luminance only, 60 seconds subexposures, 10 stacked shots. FITS Liberator, Paint.NET. North is up; east is left.

The Hickson 10 target shows in many of my SkyTools 3 Professional observing lists, as far back as August 2014. I believe it gets automatically added in some situations by the Nightly Observing List Generator. But in all that time, I don't recall viewing it. It is a lovely grouping.

West of centre is the large elliptical galaxy NGC 529.

Just above, north-west of 529, is a very small oblong smudge. Another elliptical? That's LEDA 169778.

The bright star to the south is HR 410.

To the east-south-east of centre is a canted spiral of NGC 536. It has huge sweeping spiral arms fanning out into space, perhaps extended by gravity. Fantastic.

NGC 542 appears to the south-east of 536. It looks like an edge-on spiral.

North of 536 is a curious shape, almost rectangular. It is a canted spiral perhaps with a bright core. NGC 531. SkyTools says it is a barred lenticular.

There are many more small fuzzies in this image...

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