NGC 4298 and 4302

Click on image for larger version.

This vista of spiral galaxies illustrates the nature of these thin disks of material. NGC 4298 presents it spiral arms to us, a very tightly wrapped disk with spider web like dust lanes. NGC 4203 gives us its profile and typical obscuring dust lane for an edge-on galaxy. It is estimated that NGC 4302 is about the same diameter of our galaxy at around 97,000 light years (NGC 4298 is half the diameter). If we placed our galaxy at the same distance (60 million light years away) and view it from the same perspective- it might be difficult to tell the difference! Also note the small spiral to the right of these two galaxies. If this galaxy was the same size, it would have to be more than 5 times as distant.

Equipment

20in RC Optical Systems telescope Operating at f/8.4
SBIG ST10XME CCD camera with color filter wheel

L R G B color production was used to create this image.

Luminance = 90 minutes binned 1x1
Red = 20 minutes binned 2x2
Green = 20 minutes binned 2x2
Blue = 30 minutes binned 2x2

Only one guide at this plate scale- did not permit us to center this target.

One iteration of L-R deconvolution (sharpening) algorithm using CCDsharp was applied to the luminance image.

Digital Development (DDP) via Maxim/DL was also used in order to display the the very dim and very bright details of the image simultaneously.

Minimum credit line: Jeff Hapeman/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF

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Updated: 03/15/2005