NGC2403

Back

 

 

 

Select the image to view enlargement

 

This image makes NGC2403 look like quite a strange galaxy, with its arms going in both directions. Look at a photograph aand it is obviously just a normal spiral - it is just irregularities in brightness that made it appear that the arms all eminate from the same place. This was one occasion where I broke my own rule of never looking at a photograph of an object before drawing it. A couple of nights before - a night which was no good for visual observing - I had looked over the shoulder of someone taking a CCD image of NGC2403. It was that image which made me add it to my 'to draw' list, but I also remembered enough to be influenced by what I had already seen. However from previous experience, it is quite likely that if I had not seen that CCD image my drawing would not have been much different. The galaxy is thought to be one of the M81/M82 group and is in fact a near neighbour of our own Local Group.