Dwarf Planet (1) Ceres “meets” galaxy Messier 100: a stunning image – 27 Mar. 2023.
Early this morning, we captured a unique image, showing together the wonderful spiral galaxy Messier 100 and the famous dwarf planet (1) Ceres. Here it is our image.
The spiral galaxy Messier 100 and the dwarf planet (1) Ceres. 27 Mar. 2023.
The image above comes from the average of seven, 60-second exposures, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″ + Paramount ME + SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at Virtual Telescope.
(1) Ceres was discovered on 1 Jan. 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi from Palermo (Italy). For more than two centuries it was considered an asteroid, the first one to be discovered (hence its number (1)). Since 2006 it belongs to the small group of the dwarf planets, including the ex 9th planet Pluto. While moving in the sky along its orbit, it crossed the very same spot where the stunning spiral galaxy Messier 100 is, one of the most famous and beautiful cosmic islands up there, discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781.
At the time of the images, Ceres was about 240 millions of km from the Earth (13 light minutes), while M100 is at 55 million of light years from us.
We showed it live, here it is our podcast:
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