UGC 5829
"The Spider Galaxy"
"The Spider Galaxy"
| The Spider Galaxy, UGC 5829 [A 1039+34/DDO 84/PGC 31923], is a low surface brightness, gas-rich quiescent irregular dwarf galaxy in Leo Minor. It is located at RA: 10h 42m 42s Dec: +34 26'56"(eq. 2000), approximately 26 million light years from Earth. This object has been studied infrequently over the years, with only 60 references listed by Simbad through 2010. It has rarely been imaged other than as part of general surveys such as the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (NGS-POSS) and Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). As in the case of most deep images outside the plane of the Milky Way, in the field of view there are numerous background objects. These include galaxies such as 2MASXJ1041594+343147 and 2MASX J10425345+3419334; clusters of galaxies such as NSC J104251+341738 (+- 1.5 billion light years); and Quasar SDSS J104220.43+342136.9 (+- 10 billion light years) and Quasar Candidate USNO-A2.0 1200-06571136. The annotated version has several of these objects identified. Image acquisition dates: March 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11 and April 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 2010. Camera: SBIG STL6303E Filters: AstroDon LRGB Camera control software: CCDSoft Guiding/adaptive optics: AO-L, STL internal guiding chip. Camera temperature: -20C and -10C Image Acquisition Software: CCDAP4 Telescope: RCOS 16 Carbon Tube, Aries optics, F9 with Field Flattener Telescope control software: RCOS TCC, TheSky6, Focusmax Mount: Paramount ME (MKS 4000) Subexposures: Total exposure time: 43 hours Luminance: 18 hours [10 minute subexposures] unbinned RGB: 8.5 hours each [10 minute subexposures] binned 2x2 Conditions: Seeing conditions ranged from 1.5 to 3 arc seconds. FWHM of combined Luminance data: 2.6 arc sec. Processing: CCDStack2beta, Photoshop CS4. Due to its low surface brightness, the object required a great deal of exposure time. The need to collect data over a large number of nights resulted in much of the data being collected during periods of soft seeing, and limited the aggressiveness of the processing. Image appeared in October 2010 issue of Astronomy Magazine. |
