Image of the Month
NGC-5363 Galaxy Group
NGC-5363 Galaxy Group
The NGC-5363 Galaxy group is located in the constellation of Virgo. The brightest member, NGC-5363, is a lenticular galaxy lying at a distance of over 65 million light years from Earth. It is over 100,000 light years in diameter, and shines at a visual magnitude of 10.5. The other members of the group are the nearly face-on spiral galaxy NGC-5364, which lies about 14 arc minutes to the south. About 7 arc minutes west of 5364 is the small edge-on spiral galaxy NGC-5360. About 20 arc minutes WNW of NGC-5363 is a larger edge-on spiral galaxy, NGC-5356. There are several fainter PGC galaxies in this image, the brightest of which is PGC-1277985, which lies midway between 5356 to the N and 5360 to the southeast.
This image was taken on May 17, 2023, and is a 1 hour 30 minute integration of 90 second exposures through the C-11 at f/6.3 using the Starizona Reducer/Corrector 6.3 III and the ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro color imager, operating at -15 degrees below ambient and binned 1 X 1. Guided, captured and combined using Maxim DL5. Post processed using PhotoShop CS2, Gradient XTerminator, StarShrink, AstroTools, and NoiseWare.