NGC 5364 & NGC 5363 Galaxy Group

The most prominent object in this image is the beautiful nearly face-on spiral galaxy NGC 5364 (a.k.a. NGC 5317) located in Virgo. William Herschel originally discovered it, however, his son John Herschel rediscovered and labeled it NGC 5317. Approximately 52 million light-years (LY) away it is reported to be about 93,000 LY in diameter. It seems to have an asymmetric galactic bulge and spiral arms which is attributed to interactions with the dwarf galaxy NGC 5360 located above NGC 5364 in my image.

The other major galaxy in this image is the lenticular galaxy NGC 5363. It has a well developed bulge and a diffuse galactic disk. It is approximately 57 million LY away and about 5 million LY distant from NGC 5364, so there is probably no tidal interaction between the two.

I purposely did not center this on the two prominent members as there are other midsized goodies in this image that I wanted to show such as NGC 5356, NGC 5348, and UGC 8818. I really like the structure of UGC 8818 which is 250 million LY away and 39,000 LY in diameter. There are numerous other objects visible in this image including far away galaxies and a quasars.

Typically images taken in the northern hemisphere are oriented with North at the top, however, this is oriented as it would appear taken from the southern hemisphere because I liked the way it looked. Also, this image is cropped quite a bit so I have a link to the full frame image with even more faint fuzzies (https://www.smugmug.com/app/organize/Galaxies/i-QnSTcZC).

cropped image

full frame image

NGC 5364 & NGC 5363 Galaxy Group
Dates: 5-18-23, 5-19, 5-23, 5-26, 5-27
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
Telescope: Astro-Tech AT115EDT 115mm Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 805mm (644mm w/ FR)
f/7
Focal Reducer: 0.8x AstroTech Field Flatterner/Focal Reducer
Mount: Orion Sirius
Filter Wheel: ZWO
EFW 8 x 1.25"
Filter: None, ZWO R, G, B
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope/ZWO 60mm Guidescope
Exposure: None 112 x 90, R 71 x 90, G 67 x 90, B 52 x 90
Gain: 139
Offset 20
Sensor Temp: 0 C
Processing: NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, Bill Blanshan Masks.

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