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This is not a particularly deep exposure, being about 40 minutes total duration. Nonetheless, I like this region of the sky for several reasons. First, we have NGC 2841, the large galaxy in the image, which is about 41 million light years away. It is about 150,000 light years across, making it 1.5 times the size of our own spiral galaxy. This galaxy also has a history of supernova exposions seen from Earth. Secondly, I took this image and increased the brightness and decresed the contrast in order to show the many faint fuzzies in this image, below:
By my count, there are at least 35 galaxies in this image (and very likely more that can't be discerned due to the relatively short exposure. These galaxies are circled. NGC 2841 is part of what is known as the NGC 2841 group of galaxies.
Finally, the boxes surrounding the stars on this image include G5 stars which are very similar to our own sun. In fact, the two stars enclosed in the box on the left side of the image is a double star system containing two sun-like stars. These two stars are designated HIP 45982 and 45983, respectively. What is more interesting about these two stars is that there is a known super jovian planet orbiting them. (known as HIP 45982 b).
The double star system is about 190 light years away, while the sun-like star on the right side of the image is about 97 light years away. So this helps provide a scale for the image. The streak in the bottom left of the image is a satellite orbiting our planet. The boxed stars are relatively close to the sun, and are obviously within the Milky Way, while large NGC 2841 is 41 million light years away. How much further, then are all these very faint galaxies seen in the background? The universe is very large, indeed.
The photo was taken on May 10 at the LAS observatory in Curby, Indiana, using my equipment.
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NGC 2841, in Ursa Major
