NGC 7793, Flocculent Galaxy in Sculptor

NGC 7793, NGC 7793 is a flocculent spiral galaxy in the southern constellation Sculptor  at a distance of 12.7 million light years away. Its size in the sky is 9 arc minutes which means at 12.7 light years in distance its actual size is 33,000 light years. A flocculent galaxy is one that has discontinuous spiral arms that are puffy, unlike the well defined continuous spiral arms of a galaxy like Messier 81, Bode’s galaxy.(https://earthandskyimaging.com/product/messier-81-bodes-galaxy/)  These types of galaxies are thought to be formed by a process called self propagating star formation where a disturbance such as a supernova causes nearby gas to be compressed forming new stars. These stars then begin a new cycle leading to new supernovae and subsequent star formation. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSPSF_model) When analyzed this results in the type of galaxies like NGC 7793. This is in contrast to the density wave theory of galaxy formation(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_wave_theory) which produces galaxies with well defined spiral arms. In this case the spiral arms are slow moving density waves where the stars move through them like cars move through a traffic jam. Areas of high density are the areas where stars are formed. The raw images were taken in Rio Hurtado Chile and involve 78 subimages taken over 33 hours. The color in the image was calibrated by photometric color calibration in Pixinsight which corrects the color based on analyzing the known color of the stars in the image.