August 2024 - Picture of the Month
NGC 6769, NGC 6770 and NGC 6771 in Pavo
This month I'm bringing you an fabulous image of a cosmic crash which appears to have been named either the Cosmic Ballet or the Devil's Mask by ESO, although it's the latter that seems to have stuck. Personally I prefer the NGC 6769 group or the Pavo Triplet. The ESO image is impressive enough, but I think that this more recent one of Adam's shows much more detail.
The pair of galaxies principally involved are to the upper left are NGC 6769 and NGC 6770, both of which are spiral galaxies about 180–190 million light-years away in the constellation of Pavo, are around 11th magnitude and 300–400 kly in diameter. In the lower right we have another spiral galaxy that's edge-on designated as NGC 6771 which lies slightly further away at about 200 million light-years, is 12th magnitude and of comparable size.
This image shows plenty of dust and star formation in the interacting pair, with an obvious dust lane around the middle of NGC 6771. The core of this galaxy has a strange box-like structure.
Probably due to being southern sky objects there are relative few observations of this triplet, either by astroimagers or visual observers. These galaxies aren't particularly faint and they should be visible in fairly modest scopes. I suspect that a scope of 40-cm (16in) or more might show some detail.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator.
