Spiral Galaxy NGC 4945

NGC 4945 (Caldwell 83) is a barred spiral galaxy like our Milky Way. Billions and billions of stars swirl around a supermassive black hole, making a gigantic disc stretching across 80,000 light-years. (It appears to be oval-shaped because we see it edge-on). It is approximately 13 million light-years away, meaning we are seeing it as it was 13 million years ago. Back then, our ancestors were just beginning to evolve, arise, and diversify into early apes.

The pinkish regions dotted around the galaxy are ionised hydrogen gases where new stars are being born.

To offer some perspective of the galaxy's magnitude, the field of view of the image is approximately 30 arcminutes across, about the same size as our moon. Even though this galaxy is 13 million light-years away, it is still pretty large in our night sky.

(I used a combination of archival data from Telescope Live, iTelescope and ESO Australia to create this image. The data was processed using pixinsight and Photoshop).

Recognition

This image was published in the Amateur Astrophotography Magazine Issue 107