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NGC 6118 is a "grand design" spiral galaxy located 83 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens (the Snake). It measures roughly 110,000 light-years across; about the same as our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Its shape is classified as "SA(s)cd," meaning that it has several rather loosely wound spiral arms. The large numbers of bright bluish knots are active star-forming regions where some very luminous and young stars can be perceived.〔 〕 Because it is so faint, NGC 6118 is a challenging object to see with a small telescope. Amateur astronomers have nicknamed it the "''Blinking Galaxy''", as it has a tendency to flick in and out of view with different eye positions.〔 == Image == The image on the right was taken at 2:54 pm CET on several nights around 21 Aug 2004, in somewhat unstable seeing (~2 arcsec) with the 8.2 meter VLT Melipal optical telescope, one of 4 telescopes operated by the European Southern Observatory in Cerro Paranal, Chile. The almost-true color image combines exposures on three different wavelength bands (which were assigned the following colors): 12.5 minutes in R-band (red), 25 minutes in V-band (green) and 7 minutes in B-band (blue). The image covers 6.7 x 5.8 arcmin of sky.〔 Also visible on the upper right of the image is the faint trail left by a satellite, which passed by during one of the exposures taken in the B-filter, hence its blue color.〔 The full color (broad band) image of galaxy is shown below as acquired from the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter in 2013. Although the supernova subsequently faded from view, this image shows the colors of the galactic structures of this grand spiral. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「NGC 6118」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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