AAO image reference AATCCD 6. « Previous || Next »
Top left is NE. Image width is about 12 arc min
Image and text © 1999-2002, Australian Astronomical Observatory, Photograph by S. Lee, C. Tinney and D. Malin.
This beautiful galaxy is about 25 million light years away in the direction of Pavo, a constellation of the southern hemisphere winter. It sits in a rich starfield, and is strongly inclined to our line of sight. NGC 6744 is believed to one of the most Milky Way-like of all the nearby spirals, with fluffy (flocculent) spiral arms and a large and distinctly elongated nucleus. It also has other similarities to the Milky Way that are not visible here (but seen on a deep image) with at least one distorted companion galaxy superficially similar to one of the Magellanic Clouds. The CCD chip that made this picture at the prime focus of the AAT covers about 7 arc minutes of sky. But the galaxy has a much bigger angular size than this, so a series of four overlapping exposures were made in red, green and blue light. Each 3-color set was made into a color picture and the four images merged to produce the (almost) seamless image seen here.
Entry from NGC 2000.0 (R.W. Sinnott, Ed.) © Sky Publishing Corporation, 1988:
NGC 6744 Gx 19 09.8 -63 51 s Pav 15.59. p cB, cL, R, vg, svmbM, rRelated Images
n6744_d NGC 6744, deep image
UKS 36. The spiral galaxy NGC 6744 in Pavo
For details of object position and photographic exposure, search technical table by AAT reference number.