M83 is a barred spiral galaxy located 15.21 million light years from Earth in the southern constellation Hydra. With a diameter of about 55,000 light years, it is roughly half the size of the Milky Way. M83 is one of the nearest and brightest barred spirals in the sky.
One interesting feature of M83 is the high number of supernova’s observed during the last century.
Newer generations of stars in M83 form mainly in clusters on the edges of the dark, spiraling dust lanes. These bright, young stellar groupings are only a few million years old and produce massive amounts of ultraviolet light. That light is absorbed by the surrounding diffuse gas clouds, causing them to glow in pinkish hydrogen light.
Imaged in LRGB and H alpha on our CDK 1000 at El Sauce (Obstech) in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
Image Processing: Mike Selby, Mark Hanson
Total imaging time: 32 hours