NGC3814
- The "Little" Pinwheel - Galaxy in Ursa Major
ngc3814 aka The Little Pinwheel Galaxy
Scope: Planewave 12.5" CDK
Mount: Paramount ME (MKS5000)
Camera: Apogee U16M w Astrodon Gen II Filters
10 x 10 min Luminance
8/6/8 x 10 min each RGB
Acquired using CCD-Commander and TheSkyX
Calibration and RGB processing in PixInsight; same for Luminance
Luminance
Processing: GradientCorrection, BlurX, NoiseX, Levels, Curves. DBE
RGB
Processing: GradientCorrection, SPCC, BlurX, NoiseX, Curves and
HistogramTransformation, masked Saturation boost, DBE
In Photoshop, L copied over RGB as Luminosity, a tiny bit of
sharpening of the core, smoothing of the
background, some cosmetic cleanup and then crop to 8.5x11 format
Click on the image to see it full size.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
NGC
3184, also known as The Little Pinwheel Galaxy, is an unbarred spiral
galaxy
approximately 40 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa
Major. Its
name comes from its resemblance to the Pinwheel Galaxy. It was
discovered by
German-British astronomer William Herschel on 18 March 1787. It has two
HII
regions named NGC 3180 and NGC 3181.
NGC
3184 houses a high abundance of heavy elements. The blue color of its
spiral
arms comes mostly from relatively few bright young blue stars. The
bright stars
that highlight the arms were created in huge density waves that circle
the
center.
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Lucknow, Ontario
March 2026
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