The Crepuscular Rays of IC 5063

Revisiting our old friend IC 5063, this time with a bit of color, clearly revealing the emission line features emerging nearly perpendicular from the crepuscular rays. These features, in cyan, are most easily viewed zoomed in on the nucleus. They are thought to be formed by the actively accreting supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy. In this case, the black hole may have a dark "donut" of dust around its equatorial axis, and the extremely bright light creates ionizing cones and jets of material out of the polar axis.

 

The processing here is not only extreme, but also a combination of data from two separate HST snapshot proposals, and the wondrous Legacy Survey DR9 release. I used my hacky Photoshop subtraction model to clearly reveal the center of the galaxy in the Hubble data, while the outer parts are partially filled using the LS DR9 imagery, more smoothly and confidently illustrating the galaxy's outer tidal structures.

 

Hubble image coverage is incomplete; some sections contain only one filter/color.

 

Attribution: NASA / ESA / Aaron Barth / Julianne Dalcanton / DECaM Legacy Survey / Judy Schmidt

 

Data from the following proposals comprise this image:

An ACS Schedule Gap Imaging Survey of Nearby Active Galaxies

Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems

 

Hubble data:

Red: ACS/WFC F814W

Green: Pseudo

Blue: ACS/WFC F606W

 

Legacy Survey data:

Red: DECam z (near-infrared)

Green: DECam r (visible red)

Blue: DECam g (visible green)

 

The pixel scale for the original size PNG image is 0.03962" per pixel.

 

North is 3.29° clockwise from up.

Done