Group of unusual photos/ 3 per day/ENJOY :)
View allAll Photos Tagged 4151
This image epitomizes my latest problem with my flowers. They're so thick, I can't maneuver into closer or better position for the bird. Probably doesn't matter because there are several of them and they're busy chasing each other in between slurps. They're fast too - I'm convinced somebody's gonna pick me off. Then there's the minimum focus problem, when they decide to hover in my face and look at me. Anyway, bird is far away in this one cropped a lot but I really wanted to show the sea of flowers. You can't see that pink and red salvia, but it's in there too along with poppy orange, Lantana yellow, and the target Mexican Sage.
NGC 4151 is an intermediate spiral Seyfert galaxy with weak inner ring structure located 15.8 megaparsecs (52 million light-years) from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici, Latin for “hunting dogs”. Seyfert galaxies are one of the two largest groups of active galaxies, along with quasar host galaxies.
A quasar is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. The emission from an AGN is powered by accretion onto a supermassive black hole with a mass ranging from millions to tens of billions of solar masses, surrounded by a gaseous accretion disc. Gas in the disc falling towards the black hole heats up and releases energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation.
The radiant energy of quasars is enormous; the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than that of a galaxy such as our Milky Way.
Seyfert galaxies account for about 10% of all galaxies and are some of the most intensely studied objects in astronomy, as they are thought to be powered by the same phenomena that occur in quasars, although they are closer and less luminous than quasars. These galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers which are surrounded by accretion discs of in-falling material.
Here is another twist! Some astronomers refer to this galaxy as the “Eye of Sauron”. For those of you Lord of the Rings enthusiasts, you recall that Sauron is the main antagonist in J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy where he rules the land of Mordor and has designs on taking over all of Middle Earth using the power of the One Ring. Throughout Lord of the Rings “the Eye” is the image most often associated with Sauron.
Incidentally appearing in this image are a host of other galaxies, most notably NGC 4156, a spiral galaxy immediately to the left of NGC 4151. A filament of dust and gas can be seen extending northward and encompassing another galaxy at its’ end.
Capture info:
Location: SkyPi Remote Observatory, Pie Town NM US
Telescope: Officina Stellare RiDK 400
Camera: QHY 600M
Mount: Paramount MEII
Data: LRGB 23.5 hours approximately.
Processing: Pixinsight