Cosmic Contrasts: NGC 7497 and friends through a veil of Galactic cirrus

About the Object

Cosmic contrast: when object of largely different distance conspire to form a particular interesting setting. Like for NGC 7497 , a barred spiral galaxy of type SBd located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. Seen almost edge-on, the galaxy with its prominent dust lanes shines through a veil of faint Galactic cirrus, also known as Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN). Also a number of smaller galaxies are visible through the cirrus, in particular the grand design spiral about 2 NGC7497 diameters away at around 10 o´ clock.

Observation Notes

Arguably, I see a certain tendency in many galaxy images to overemphasize faint structures in the outskirts/environs of galaxies, at a level that the structures of the main galaxy itself often are getting lost. On the other hand, the cirrus here is really prominent so it was easy to capture even from light polluted suburbia, so I tried to find a good compromise to make the cirrus clearly visible, but still providing a clear and structured image of the galaxy itself.

Data were taken on 2026 October 4, 5, 7, and 8

Technical Details

View the full-resolution image together with complete acquisition and processing details on AstroBin.