NGC 4631 is an edge-on barred spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici exhibiting a disk of young blue stars and core of old yellow stars. It has an equatorial dust lane dotted with numerous red emission nebulae. It's appearance is strongly suggestive of a whale. complete with an OB association of blue supergiants as a pectoral fin and an emission nebula as an eye. It is interacting with the dwarf elliptical galaxy NGC 4627, similar to the dwarf galaxy NGC 205 (M110) near M31, the Andromeda galaxy. The pair are often referred to as the "Whale and Pup" and lie approximately 30 million light-years from Earth.
Image Data:
Telescope/Mount: Celestron Compustar C14 with Astro-Physics 0.75x focal reducer (f/8).
Camera: SBIG STL 11000 CCD camera with Baader Planetarium LRGB filters. SBIG AO-L adaptive optics @ 7 Hz.
Exposures: LRGB=350:70:60:60 minutes=9 hours total exposure.
Location:Pommier Observatory, Portland, OR, USA
Dates:2016-03-29 through 2016-04-18
See additional astrophotographs at www.rodpommier.com