William Ostling
MACS J0717.5+3745 Epoch 1 + Epoch 2
This is the cumulation of 154 Hubble orbits pointing at this cluster!
Looking at the largest elliptical galaxies, almost all of them are disturbed in some way, almost as if they have recently consumed or interacted with a smaller neighbor. The shells which align more or less neatly with the long axis are indicative of absorption of a much smaller galaxy, which seems to be the case for all of the interacting ellipticals. You can almost imagine if time were sped up that this cluster would be a roiling ball of activity with the largest galaxies consistently snacking on smaller morsels. Also visible are many lenticular galaxies, seemingly devoid of star formation but still maintaining some semblance of their past spiral selves.
What is interesting to me is the blue background galaxies. My best guess would be that they are starforming immensely and putting out a lot of ultraviolet light. All that light gets redshifted and shows up in the 435 filters.
Details!
I used WFC3 data for low infrared and ACS data for near-infrared/visible light.
Calibrated datasets can be found here: archive.stsci.edu/pub/hlsp/frontier/macs0717/images/hst/v...
Red: 105w, 125w, 140w, 160w (keep in mind that these are actually wavelengths of 1105 nm, etc)
Orange: 814w
Cyan: 606w
Blue: 435w
This is one of my favorite areas, so I hope you enjoy it!
Website: theastroenthusiast.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/the_astronomy_enthusiast/
MACS J0717.5+3745 Epoch 1 + Epoch 2
This is the cumulation of 154 Hubble orbits pointing at this cluster!
Looking at the largest elliptical galaxies, almost all of them are disturbed in some way, almost as if they have recently consumed or interacted with a smaller neighbor. The shells which align more or less neatly with the long axis are indicative of absorption of a much smaller galaxy, which seems to be the case for all of the interacting ellipticals. You can almost imagine if time were sped up that this cluster would be a roiling ball of activity with the largest galaxies consistently snacking on smaller morsels. Also visible are many lenticular galaxies, seemingly devoid of star formation but still maintaining some semblance of their past spiral selves.
What is interesting to me is the blue background galaxies. My best guess would be that they are starforming immensely and putting out a lot of ultraviolet light. All that light gets redshifted and shows up in the 435 filters.
Details!
I used WFC3 data for low infrared and ACS data for near-infrared/visible light.
Calibrated datasets can be found here: archive.stsci.edu/pub/hlsp/frontier/macs0717/images/hst/v...
Red: 105w, 125w, 140w, 160w (keep in mind that these are actually wavelengths of 1105 nm, etc)
Orange: 814w
Cyan: 606w
Blue: 435w
This is one of my favorite areas, so I hope you enjoy it!
Website: theastroenthusiast.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/the_astronomy_enthusiast/