Astr112 Photography Projects, Spring 2006

NGC3628, Jory Jones

NGC3628 is a Sb spiral galaxy seen edge on. As a Sb galaxy it has a large bulge with spiral arms that are more widely spread then in a Sa galaxy and appear less smooth. The galaxy is best observed in the spring and can be found in the constellation Leo. It was discovered on April 8, 1784 by William Herschel and belongs to the Leo Triplet or M66 group of galaxies. Out of the three galaxies it is the faintest and most difficult to see with an apparent magnitude of 10.51 and a distance of approximately 35 million light years. Becasue of this it was first missed by Messier in his study of the galaxy group. The galaxy is approximately 100,000ly in diameter. As seen edge on, the dark dust of the disk hides the bright central part of the bulge while also hiding many of the young stars in the spiral arms. Gravitational interaction with its close neighboring galaxies in the cluster has distorted the outer edges of the disk.

The Photograph was taken on March 20, 2006 and is a compellation of four deep filter photographs, with each exposure lasting 300 seconds. In the picture NGC3628 can be seen edge on with the dark dust of the disk obscuring the central part of the bulge. Light from younger stars in the spiral arms can faintly be seen closer to the bulge while the distortion of the farthest edges can faintly be observed at the far ends of the spiral.

References:
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-68124

http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/n3628.html

TheSky Astronomy Software. 2002. Software Bisque. Golden Colorado