APOD: 2024 September 5 - NGC 247 and Friends

Good morning, Rallypoint, and welcome to the September 5th edition of Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD). NGC 247 (aka the Needle Eye Galaxy) is 11 million light years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale). Its nickname is derived from the pronounced void in the left most section of the galaxy.

Below and left of the Needle Eye is a group of four galaxies (Burbridge's Chain) named after Margaret Burbridge, a British-American observational astronomer and astrophysicist. These galaxies lie 300 million light years from Earth. Margaret was the first of four authors (her husband Geoffrey and astronomer Fred Hoyle were two of the others) of the 1957 scientific paper "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars." That paper paper reviewed stellar nucleosynthesis theory and supported it with both astronomical and laboratory data. It identified nucleosynthesis processes that are responsible for producing the elements heavier than iron and explained their relative abundances. Cheers.