Antennae Galaxies Closer Than Thought
The Antennae Galaxies are about 20 million light-years closer than was thought. That’s the result of new research from an international group led by Ivo Savianne from the European Southern Observatory using the Hubble Space Telescope and ground based observations.
The research put the distance estimate at 45 million light-years, the former estimate was 65 million light-years. You might be tempted to thinking how can that possibly be, after all that is a big difference and how can that possibly be. Cosmic distances may seem to be pretty routine; in reality it’s not like getting out a ruler and it turns out that determining distances is one of the most difficult things in professional astronomy.
The Antennae Galaxies are the closest pair of colliding galaxies, and at a magnitude 10.9 are easily visible with a modest telescope. The coordinates are RA: 12h 01m 52.8s / Dec: -18°51′54” (Epoch 2000).
The press release is very good and there are other images (and larger formats) there too, check it out. BTW, I noted Robert Gendler is in the credits and he is one of the world’s best astrophotographers; I’ve enjoyed his work for years.
Credit: NASA, ESA & Ivo Saviane (European Southern Observatory)/Robert Gendler

Posted May 9, 2008
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