Thursday, October 26, 2017

NGC 7814: The Little Sombrero in Pegasus - UNIVERSE


Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasusand you can find this expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. Dominated by NGC 7814, the pretty field of view would almost be covered by a full moon.NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero for its resemblance to the brighter more famous M104, the Sombrero Galaxy. Both Sombrero and Little Sombrero are spiral galaxies seen edge-on, and both have extensive halos and central bulges cut by a thin disk with thinner dust lanes in silhouette.

In fact, NGC 7814 is some 40 million light-years away and an estimated 60,000 light-years across. That actually makes the Little Sombrero about the same physical size as its better known namesake, appearing smaller and fainter only because it is farther away. Very faint dwarf galaxies, potentially a satellites of NGC 7814, have been discovered in deep exposures of Little Sombrero.


Image & info via APOD
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit & Copyright: CHART32 Team, Processing - Johannes Schedler

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