M83

M83, the so-called Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, is in Hydra, and estimated to be about 15 million lightyears distant. This image is a hybrid, combining LRGB data from both Chile (SSRO-South) and New Mexico (SSRO-North). The New Mexico data, taken with a large chip camera, served to display the galaxy with a wide surrounding star field, but M83 never rises too high from this location, and the seeing was relatively poor. Thus, additional data from Chile was layered in, taken at higher elevation and good-to-excellent seeing (about 2.0"). Unfortunately, our set-up in Chile only yields a field of view of about 10x10', but this was enough to capture most of the galactic center. The total exposure was about 20 hours between north and south observatories.