TYPE: Spiral Galaxy

APPARENT MAGNITUDE: 9

SIZE: 20 arc minutes - The field of view is 80 x 60 arc minutes 

DISTANCE: 7 Millions light years

NGC 300 is one of the closest and nearby galaxies in the southern sky and belongs to the Sculptor Group. It has a very low surface brightness (13.9) and in perspective it has several bright stars that take its contrast down. Compared with other galaxies NGC 300 is remarkably normal implying that is an appropriate object for astronomers to study structures and contents.

 

The night was with some cirrus in the sky and the seeing was good for our Pampas region. No matter that all images where taken at bin 2x2 in order to get as much as photons as possible in a limited time. This is the first galaxy shot with the QSI 583. The CCD sensitivity was fair enough with my expectations despite the fast Orion UK optics. The objects deserves more focal length but the relative wide sky background shows several faint distant galaxies and nice stellar background