View allAll Photos Tagged redshift
A big spiral galaxy interacting with a smaller, irregular-looking galaxy. This pair is sitting near the edge of some faint Milky Way dust & gas, though it is hard to see in the Hubble image. Check the Legacy Survey widefield view to see it.
A widefield color view is available here: legacysurvey.org/viewer?ra=356.7681&dec=29.4835&l...
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
All Channels: ACS/WFC F606W
North is 1.99° clockwise from up.
Some galactic interactions result in more dramatic changes than others.
A widefield color view is available here:
legacysurvey.org/viewer?ra=334.8703&dec=29.3910&l...
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
All Channels: ACS/WFC F606W
North is 17.75° counter-clockwise from up.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy LRG-3-817, also known as SDSS J090122.37+181432.3. The galaxy, its image distorted by the effects of gravitational lensing, appears as a long arc to the left of the central galaxy cluster.
Gravitational lensing occurs when a large distribution of matter, such as a galaxy cluster, sits between Earth and a distant light source. As space is warped by massive objects, the light from the distant object bends as it travels to us and we see a distorted image of it. This effect was first predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Strong gravitational lenses provide an opportunity for studying properties of distant galaxies, since Hubble can resolve details within the multiple arcs that are one of the main results of gravitational lensing. An important consequence of lensing distortion is magnification, allowing us to observe objects that would otherwise be too far away and too faint to be seen. Hubble makes use of this magnification effect to study objects beyond those normally detectable with the sensitivity of its 2.4-meter-diameter primary mirror, showing us the most distant galaxies humanity has ever encountered.
This lensed galaxy was found as part of the Sloan Bright Arcs Survey, which discovered some of the brightest gravitationally lensed high-redshift galaxies in the night sky.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Allam et al.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Find us on Instagram
A team with all the members originating from Cardinal City. They go wherever help is needed, whether that's in Asia, Australia, or anywhere else, really. The team still has a lot to learn, but they are dedicated to helping out where they are needed. They are mostly seen in towns without local heroes, as they need help more than the major cities with heroes. They are a public team, that is trending quite often on all social media platforms.
Alias: Ophidian
Real Name: Lysander Maddox Thain
Gender: Male
Allegiance: Hero
Powers: powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Snake_Physiology
Backstory: Having the name Lysander makes it really easy to get picked on. So even though he started to call himself Zander, the bullying was prevalent throughout elementary and middle school. This is when his interest in reptiles began, more specifically snakes. He would research everything there is to know about snakes. In high school, he would get a part time job at the Cardinal City Zoo. It was also during this time when he volunteered to a Genetech experiment. Genetech infused him with the DNA of a rough green snake. The experimental procedure worked, and he now had various abilities/traits of a snake. He's able to break even the strongest metals with his bite. He can create a scale like armor, as a sort of defense mechanism, increasing the damage he can withstand. That's not even considering the enhanced strength, smell, flexibility, agility, and lung capacity. Since snakes as a species are only seen as pure evil, Lysander decided to try and change that stigma, by becoming the hero Ophidian.
Alias: Redshift (Currently), Blur (Formerly)
Real Name: Brooke Benson
Gender: Female
Allegiance: Hero
Backstory: Brooke would always be running around, being active in various sports. Despite looking quite happy, there was a deep seeded sadness within her, which she couldn't shake. Her powers didn't make things any easier. A constant need to be moving around, with her whole body vibrating constantly. It freaked her parents out various times, and would visit several specialists, but there wasn't a solution given to this problem. This problem would lead to her pushing away any guys that were interested in her romantically, as she didn't want to hurt them. It was at this time in which she would become a hero, as running seemed to stop the vibrating, at least for a short while. She would call herself Blur, as that's all she is when she's running. Since she was just a freshman in high-school at the time, she mostly avoided fights with villains, and focused on rescue operations. This eventually attracted the attention of the first Burnout, Garrett Reddick. He saw her potential, and wanted to teach her how to better use her gifts. At least that's what she thought. In reality, he wanted to find someone who he could truly mold, as his attempts with his son didn't work. He would find a way to lessen the rate at which she vibrates, and in return, she became his sidekick. This was during the time when his son Marcus was in a coma. Now being able to somewhat control her vibrations, she would have various flings with different guys, even going so far as to sleep with some of them, as she didn't see her own worth. While she was considered his sidekick, Brooke had her own ideas of what being a hero entailed, as the examples were all around them. This would lead to them fighting, even during battles with supervillains. Brooke would stop being his sidekick altogether upon graduating high school. three years later, when she couldn't take it anymore. Adopting a new name, Redshift, along with a new costume, she would become a hero in her own right. The sadness was still there though, as all of her high-school friends moved on, while she started working a minimum wage job. There were times when she considered ending it all, but being a hero pushed her through it all. A solution would come years later, though not necessarily the one she may have expected, in the form of Euphoria. It was the new drug of choice for the seedy underbelly of Cardinal City. People who wanted a way out of their sadness. Of course Brooke would take this opportunity to get some for herself. Obviously this was a conflict of interest, but she couldn't stand being sad anymore. A new hero calling himself Burnout would be seen in public for the first time, but Brooke recognized that it wasn't Garrett. After taking Euphoria, she would feel indestructible, like she could do anything. She had no fear, which led to her charging headfirst into a supervillain prison breakout by herself. This new Burnout would save her from getting herself killed, even though she tried so hard to do things by herself. He delayed her until Archon arrived, who would round up most of the escapees. After the effects of the drug wore off, Brooke thanked this new Burnout, by kissing him and running away straight after. She recalls that this Burnout is nothing like the monster Burnout she was the sidekick of. Hopefully, in time, she can find a way past her inner sadness, along with the vibrations, but for now, she's Redshift, a hero whose always on the move to save whoever she can.
Alias: Ice Wall
Real Name: Eric Beaumont
Allegiance: Hero
Powers: Minimal Cryokinesis.
Background: When Eric was younger and in school, his class went on a field trip to Sunrise City. During the trip, Eric got separated from the group, and wandered on his own. Eventually, he came across what he thought was a shield. In reality, it was a coolant system for an alien device, used in the invasion on Sunrise City years ago. Once he touched it, he started to feel different. It was as though the coolant had fused into his body. He would soon learn of his abilities. He could shoot off blasts of ice, and was able to instantaneously freeze whatever he wanted with just a thought. He developed his combat skills through years of training in different forms of martial arts. He didn't really want to fully rely on his powers when he was crime fighting, so he decided to learn how to use a shield. He decided to go back to Sunrise when the Glorbax attacked, and helped out as best he could, trying to save as many as he could. Saved the person who would later become the Sunrise hero known as Tricksta. After the invasion, he returned to Cardinal. He primarily focuses on street level crime, on gangs like the West End Warriors. Since he's grown attached to using a shield, he doesn't use his powers all too much now, mostly just for transportation sake, and in emergencies. Eric decided on his costume for the sake of easy mobility, and to have some protection when he's fighting. Also helps that everyone loves ninjas, right?! Eric doesn't like to be in the limelight as much as other heroes do, as he doesn't do it for the fame.
Alias: Bonzer
Real Name: Cameron Cross
Gender: Male
Allegiance: Hero
Backstory: Cameron Cross grew up singing around the house. At the age of 19, he was signed to a record label after they saw a video of him singing online. He then produced his first and only single, titled "No Chances". A one hit wonder. After that, he was all but forgotten. Years pass, and he realizes that he can be in the spotlight once more. After seeing all these various heroes, he decides to become a hero, as they get quite the publicity. As he fights crime, he has his song playing in the background. The suit he was able to get after years of saving money.
Alias: Rave
Real Name: Neo
Gender: Female
Allegiance: Hero
Powers: Neon (Just search up infamous second son Neon powers and that's the basic gist of it)
Backstory: Neo growing up always loved being the centre of attention. She learned early on that she had a beautiful singing voice, which she would use to gain fame. "Rave" became her online persona when she would sing covers, as well as original songs. Her videos would garner the attraction of millions, launching her into stardom. This led to her landing a record deal at one of the only record companies located in Cardinal City. Towards her fans, she is very appreciative, and kind to them, even if they are quite eccentric at times. It was because of them that she even made it this far though. She performed all around Cardinal City, using her powers to enhance the experience for everyone watching. This would go on for several years before one of the worst years of her life happened. A crazed fan would end up stalking her for a year, trying to get with her, and just tried to be around her in every minute of every day. It got creepier and creepier as time went on, before eventually she filed a restraining order against him. It was during this time, where she felt everyone kept putting her up on this pedestal, instead of being treated like a normal human being. She would hear of this new hero calling himself Bonzer, that would fight crime, while Cameron Cross' music would play in the background. Eventually she learned of Cameron Cross actually being Bonzer. They knew each other through the music industry, so she asked him for advice about the hero gig. Though with him only caring about the fame, he didn't really give all that much helpful advice. Deciding to become a hero, Neo donned the "Rave" name once more, to fight crime, while also trying to live a normal life as Neo. To this day no one knows of her true identity.
An interacting pair of galaxies also known as NGC 2799 (left) & NGC 2798 (right). NGC 2799 appears warped, and seems to be getting ripped apart. Rain comes to mind when looking at this, like the stars and gas of the blue galaxy are mere particles condensing and falling into the red galaxy like rain. It's probably nothing like rain, though.
Color comes from SDSS this time, which is always a pleasure. As far as surveys go, it's very easy to work with. Data for this field can be found here:
dr12.sdss.org/fields/name?name=ngc+2799
NASA/ESA/SDSS/Judy Schmidt
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
Luminosity: ACS/WFC F606W
Red: SDSS i
Green: SDSS r
Blue: SDSS g
North is 13.50° clockwise from up.
Tidal interaction and streams between two spiral galaxies. Very interesting to see the trail of stars apparently flow from one galaxy into the other. It seems a bit ambiguous in this view, but the deep, widefield view available from the Legacy Survey makes it look plausible.
The widefield color view is available here:
legacysurvey.org/viewer?ra=254.6166&dec=58.9466&l...
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
All Channels: ACS/WFC F606W
North is 0.41° clockwise from up.
Plaza de España, Seville
Eximus Wide and Slim (Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim clone) + Fuji Sensia 100 + xpro
Dotted across the sky in the constellation of Pictor (The Painter’s Easel) is the galaxy cluster highlighted here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope: SPT-CL J0615-5746, or SPT0615 for short. First discovered by the South Pole Telescope less than a decade ago, SPT0615 is exceptional among the myriad clusters so far catalogued in our map of the Universe — it is the highest-redshift cluster for which a full, strong lens model is published.
More information: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1918a/
Credit:
ESA/Hubble & NASA, I. Karachentsev et al., F. High et al.
This striking image captures the interacting galaxy pair known as Arp-Madore 2339-661, so named because they belong to the Arp-Madore catalogue of peculiar galaxies. However, this particular peculiarity might be even odder than first meets the eye, as there are in fact three galaxies interacting here, not just two.
The two clearly defined galaxies are NGC 7733 (smaller, lower right) and NGC 7734 (larger, upper left). The third galaxy is currently referred to as NGC 7733N, and can actually be spotted in this picture if you look carefully at the upper arm of NGC 7733, where there is a visually notable knot-like structure, glowing with a different colour to the arm and obscured by dark dust. This could easily pass as part of NGC 7733, but analysis of the velocities (speed, but also considering direction) involved in the galaxy shows that this knot has a considerable additional redshift, meaning that it is very likely its own entity and not part of NGC 7733. This is actually one of the many challenges that observational astronomers face: working out whether an astronomical object really is just one, or one lying in front of another as seen from Earth’s perspective!
All three galaxies lie quite close to each other, roughly 500 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Tucana, and, as this image shows, they are interacting gravitationally with one another. In fact, some science literature refers to them as a ‘merging group’, meaning that they are on a course to ultimately become a single entity.
[Image Description: Two spiral galaxies. Each glows brightly in the centre, where a bar stretches from side to side. The upper one is more round and its arms form two thin rings. The lower galaxy is flatter and its arms make one outer ring; a dusty knot atop its upper arm marks out a third object. Gravity is pulling gas and dust together where the galaxies come close. A number of small galaxies surround them on a black background.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; CC BY 4.0
Acknowledgement: L. Shatz
A spiral galaxy with an extra long arm outstretched. No apparent interacting partner nearby. Perhaps the interaction was with a very small, irregular galaxy that is already difficult to distinguish from the spiral. Or maybe this galaxy is just like this? Hm.
A widefield color view is available here:
legacysurvey.org/viewer?ra=29.1780&dec=-43.9798&l...
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
All Channels: ACS/WFC F606W
North is 110.15° counter-clockwise from up.
A flocculent spiral galaxy with some of our own galaxy's flocculence in front of it. If you look to the lower right corner, you can see it's a bit darker and muddy-colored. That's our Milky Way's dust. It's thick enough that it seems to completely obscure some of the distant spiral in visible light. It is difficult to tell where our galaxy ends and the external galaxy begins, which almost makes it look like it's attached.
None of the regular color surveys I usually check have contained this galaxy, but color data was kindly provided by William Keel, which he gathered using the remotely-operated SARA 24-inch telescope at Cerro Tololo in Chile.
NASA/ESA/William Keel/Judy Schmidt
HST Proposal:
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
Luminosity: ACS/WFC F606W
Red: r
Green: v
Blue: b
North is 8.42° clockwise from up.
Things have been rough for this galaxy. There are stellar streams strewn all about, the dust disk is warped all over the place, and there's hardly any star formation going on. That's what makes it so cool, though. I love the way the dust disk is pushed and pulled around, but still maintains semblance to a disk.
BONUS: If you look down at the bottom, next to the two red stars, there's the cutest little hourglass nebula I've ever seen. I think it's a planetary nebula, anyway. It's either a planetary nebula that's fairly typical, or the weirdest galaxy I've ever seen. I'll defer to Occam's razor for this one.
Edit: Some Galaxy Zoo people and Phil Plait are shooting holes in my idea that it's anything but a galaxy. Apparently there ARE galaxies that look exactly like this, such as NGC 2665. I'm just gonna redact that whole paragraph for now.
Color from SDSS again. Data for that may be found here:
dr12.sdss.org/fields/name?name=arp156
NASA/ESA/SDSS/Judy Schmidt
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
Luminosity: ACS/WFC F606W
Red: SDSS i
Green: SDSS r
Blue: SDSS g
North is 37.73° clockwise from up.
Saw this drop into the archive this morning and knew what I had to do. Two spirals interacting in some way, though I find it very difficult to interpret the image in order to place them spatially. It looks like the smaller one is fully behind, although it could be partially within the larger galaxy. I'm really not sure!
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
All Channels: ACS/WFC F606W
North is 57.06° counter-clockwise from up.
In a survey of 100,000 galaxies (called Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science, or CEERS), Webb spotted the most distant active supermassive black hole to date, plus two more small early black holes and 11 early galaxies. All of these objects existed in the first 1.1 billion years after the big bang.
Read more: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-detects-most-dista...
This image: Researchers have identified the most distant active supermassive black hole to date in the James Webb Space Telescope’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey. The black hole, within galaxy CEERS 1019, existed just over 570 million years after the big bang and weighs only 9 million solar masses. For context, the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is 4.6 million times the mass of the Sun, and other very distant supermassive black holes we’ve known about for decades typically weigh more than 1 billion times the mass of the Sun.
Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI). Science: Steven Finkelstein (University of Texas at Austin), Rebecca Larson (University of Texas at Austin), Pablo Arrabal Haro (NOIRLab).
Image description: A graphic titled “Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, Black Hole Existed 570 Million Years After Big Bang.” The graphic shows the redshift (how long ago the light was emitted) of one active supermassive black hole. At top right is a very small zoomed out version of the complete galaxy field. To its left is a zoomed-in area. It shows an assortment of galaxies, but has an inset box singling out 3 red dots, 2 with a green tint. This group is labeled CEERS 1019, 13.2 billion years. It shows a black hole from 13.2 billion years ago. The bottom shows a line graph with data from Webb’s NIRSpec. It plots wavelength of light in microns on the x-axis and relative brightness of light on the y-axis. Webb data is shown as an uneven white line and fitted to 2 different models. One is a smooth purple line with a large peak, representing slower gas in the galaxy. The other is a smooth yellow line with a small peak, representing faster gas around the black hole.
A rather tight grouping of galaxies. Looks like some interaction or merging is about to occur.
A widefield color view is available here:
legacysurvey.org/viewer?ra=13.4515&dec=-13.8561&l...
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
All Channels: ACS/WFC F606W
North is 32.05° counter-clockwise from up.
A dwarf galaxy bustling with star formation, as evidenced by the tendrils of emission nebula appearing green here due to the choice of filters. The emission must be very strong indeed, for it is visible even in wideband color. A narrowband filter would bring out a lot of details in the nebula.
In my own mind I call these star seams due to their linear appearance and the way the nebula tends to look like it is flowing out from the vein of star formation. You can see a spectacular example of one of these with appropriate narrowband filters included here: flic.kr/p/pTDvDs
Color comes from this SDSS field:
dr12.sdss.org/fields/name?name=arp+163
HST Proposal:
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
Luminosity: ACS/WFC F606W
Red: SDSS i
Green: SDSS r
Blue: SDSS g
North is 20.91° clockwise from up.
“One of Webb’s most complex instrument modes is with the MIRI Medium Resolution Spectrometer (MRS). The MRS is an integral-field spectrograph, which provides spectral and spatial information simultaneously for the entire field of view. The spectrograph provides three-dimensional ‘data cubes’ in which every pixel in an image contains a unique spectrum. Such spectrographs are extremely powerful tools to study the composition and kinematics of astronomical objects, as they combine the benefits of both traditional imaging and spectroscopy.
“The MRS is designed to have a spectral resolving power (observed wavelength divided by the smallest detectable wavelength difference) of about 3,000. That is high enough to resolve key atomic and molecular features in a variety of environments. At the highest redshifts, the MRS will be able to study hydrogen emission from the first galaxies. At lower redshifts, it will probe molecular hydrocarbon features in dusty nearby galaxies and detect the bright spectral fingerprints of elements such as oxygen, argon, and neon that can tell us about the properties of ionized gas in the interstellar medium. Closer to home, the MRS will produce maps of spectral features due to water ice and simple organic molecules in giant planets in our own solar system and in planet-forming disks around other stars.
“In order to cover the wide 5 to 28 micron wavelength range as efficiently as possible, the MRS integral field units are broken up into twelve individual wavelength bands, each of which must be calibrated individually. Over the past few weeks, the MIRI team (a large international group of astronomers from the USA and Europe) has been focusing primarily on calibrating the imaging components of the MRS. They want to ensure that all twelve bands are spatially well aligned with each other and with the MIRI Imager, so that it can be used to place targets accurately into the smaller MRS field of view. We show some early test results from this alignment process, illustrating the image quality achieved in each of the twelve bands using observations of the bright K giant star HD 37122 (located in the southern sky near the Large Magellanic Cloud).
“Once the spatial alignment and image quality of the several bands are well characterized, the MIRI team will prioritize calibrating the spectroscopic response of the instrument. This step will include determining the wavelength solution and spectral resolution throughout each of the twelve fields of view using observations of compact emission-line objects and diffuse planetary nebulae ejected by dying stars. We show the exceptional spectral resolving power of the MRS with a small segment of a spectrum obtained from recent engineering observations of the active galactic nucleus at the core of Seyfert galaxy NGC 6552. Once these basic instrument characteristics are established, it will be possible to calibrate MRS so that it is ready to support the wealth of Cycle 1 science programs due to start in a few short weeks.”
Read more:
blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/06/16/webbs-mid-infrared-spectro...
This image: These are the first engineering data cubes for each of the twelve MRS spectral bands, illustrating the astrometric registration and image quality for observations of HD 37122. In each panel the dashed cyan circle shows a 1 arcsecond radius region around the expected location of the star in celestial coordinates. While the star is bright at short wavelengths it fades toward longer wavelengths, where the MRS also detects thermal emission from Webb’s primary mirror. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the MIRI Consortium.
Cruising an active galaxy with many star-forming regions in the Abell 2029 galaxy supercluster, the Hullbull RST captures an image of new massive hot blue stars forming in a still expanding supernova remnant of what must have been an extremely massive star, or possibly an area of past chain-reaction supernovae. This image combines spectral data from the infrared sensors (red), and light gathered through the variable density filter delivered by the starChaser. Colored in one of the many Hullbull palettes, the orange/yellow areas of the nebula represent sulfur, green represents ionized oxygen, and blue represents hydrogen.
Not a real space image. Light art.
Composite of two unaltered images. One image using Waterworld technique/100mm lens to create nebula patterns (source light is dry grass, green shrubs, yellow building wall with large orange and red border in bright daylight, and a hand-held black matte background). Second long exposure designed and implmented based on Waterworld image geometry, 100mm lens (base layer/EXIF data) to create stars; two partially masked "burns" to create segregated star color patterns using water droplet technique and red, white, yellow colored LEDs; cover/recompose, create larger stars using blue LEDs. Didn't quite get many of the perimeter blue stars where I wanted them. Close, but no Cee-garrr. Damn.
"Redshift" Self Portrait September 2019
A profound meaning and explanation to this picture can be read below. It is an excerpt I found very relevant from The Astrophysical Journal, Published 18 March 2003, A Significant Population of Red, Near-Infrared-selected High-Redshift Galaxies
"In the nearby universe, the reddest galaxies are generally the most massive, with the highest ages, metallicity, and correlation length. It is possible that such a relation already existed in the early universe. The red galaxies found here would be the descendants of galaxies that started to form stars very early, and they would be related to more massive halos than those of the young Lyman break galaxies at z = 3. In this case, their spatial densities are expected to be higher and their correlation length to be enhanced..."
(source: The Astrophysical Journal, April 20, 2003 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/375155 Discussion )
© 2019 Sabine Fischer
find me elsewhere:
instagram: sabine fey
portfolio: www.phoenixstudios.de
facebook: sabine fischer photography
NGC4216, NGC4206, NGC4222 Galaxy Group, The Virgo Triplet
NGC4216 is a large spiral galaxy in the constellation of Virgo, morphological class SAB(s)b, intermediate between barred and unarred spirals. The Carnegie Atlas of Galaxies (1994) regards it as prototypical because it appears in many textbooks to illustrate the nucleus, bulge, disk, dust lanes, and spiral structure of major spiral galaxies. More recently it has been the subject of several studies related to galaxy mergers, stellar streams, and multi-band analysis of its gas and dust content. Along with its two large companions, NGC4206 and NGC4222, the galaxy is a peripheral member of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. All three are rapidly moving toward us around the cluster's center of gravity. High "peculiar velocities" through space render their redshifts unsuitable for distance calculations. See Section 5, Fig. 6.
www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/articles/basic-extragal...
In the chart on the annotated image, their derived properties (except for the redshift radial velocity) are calculated from the mean of the redshift independent distance measurements, and are enclosed in parentheses. Integrated apparent magnitudes and derived absolute magnitudes for all three galaxies are understated due to their edge-on orientation which presents a smaller luminous area to the observer, and also due to light absorption and scatter by gas and dust in the galactic plane. The three galaxies are gravitationally bound to each other and to the Virgo Cluster, but do not show evidence of significant tidal disruption.
NGC4216 has a small, very bright active galactic nucleus of the Hii LINER type which hosts an actively accreting supermassive black hole. Silchenko et al. (1999) report that high resolution spectroscopy reveals a distinct high metallicity nucleus and a circumnuclear ring of starburst activity, resulting in a star population much younger than the surrounding bulge. In most spiral galaxies the nuclear region and the bulge are composed of ancient, very low metallicity stars. It is thought that NGC4216 has a small bar which triggers new star formation by attracting and disrupting interstellar gas and dust clouds. Although some sources describe NGC4216 as a low hydrogen content "anemic galaxy", optical images clearly show numerous bright blue floccules of starburst activity in the disk. In their VLA (Very Large Array radio telescope) study of Virgo spirals, Chung et al. (2010) report moderate atomic hydrogen (Hi) flux and mass within the disk, but low Hi density on the surface. It appears the galaxy has undergone surface stripping by thermal evaporation, gravitational interaction, or "ram stripping". At inclination angle of 85*, the galaxy's disk is ideally oriented to present prominent dust lanes and pillar-like "plumes" of stars arising above the galactic plane, which appear as low-lying blue clouds on the attached photograph. The origin of the plumes is not well understood, but is presumed to be caused by interactions with the intergalactic medium within the Virgo Cluster.
NGC4216 is surrounded by a large, diffuse stellar halo containing 2-4 stellar streams (not visible on my image) and a complex system of around 700 globular clusters, nearly 5 times as many as the Milky Way. The stellar streams appear to be gravitationally deformed remnants of at least two satellite dwarf galaxies in the process of accretion. Compared to other galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, NGC 4216 appears to be undergoing a high rate of galaxy mass assembly.
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/767/2/133/pdf
On the annotated image, several faint, diffuse objects which I suspect to be dwarf candidates are marked as DC. The large number of globular clusters were probably brought in by dwarf galaxies during numerous mergers.
The field includes a number of remote faint objects described in the chart on the annotated image. Among these are three very luminous quasars which are presently receding at superluminal velocities, and lie beyond the cosmic event horizon. Two of the quasars (marked with +) appear to be significantly brighter than their listed apparent magnitudes. Since quasar luminosity depends on the rate of accretion, which can change depending on the availability of matter, quasars commonly manifest variability of up to several magnitudes over a period of days to years. See Section 25 here
www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/articles/basic-extragal...
The most distant object is [VV2006] J121506.9+130559, lying at a light travel distance (lookback time) of 12 billion ly. In the present cosmological epoch, its proper (comoving) distance is approximately 23.3 Bly.
Image details:
-Remote Takahashi TOA 150 x 1105 mm, Paramount GT GEM
-OSC 20 x 300 sec + 25 x 300 sec taken in 2021, 2x drizzle, 50% linear crop
-Software: DSS, XnView, Starnet++ 2, StarTools 1.3 and 1.7, Cosmological Calculator 3
Compared to the last year's image, there is a mild gain in resolution, and >0.5 mag gain in the limiting magnitude.
NASA Release date: Jan 26, 2011
How far does Hubble see?
This diagram shows how Hubble has revolutionised the study of the distant, early Universe. Before Hubble was launched, ground-based telescopes were able to observe up to a redshift of around 1, about half way back through cosmic history. Hubble’s latest instrument, Wide Field Camera 3 has identified a candidate galaxy at a redshift of 10 — around 96 per cent of the way back to the Big Bang. The forthcoming NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope will see further still.
Credit: NASA, ESA
To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/farthest-galaxy...
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
Follow us on Twitter
Join us on Facebook
A look at the tidal interaction between NGC 2993 (left) and NGC 2992 (right). It's hard to make out, but I can just barely see slender streams and clumps in the fuzzy, faint bridge between the galaxies. The whole visible system extends quite a bit outside of the frame, and an interesting clump near NGC 2992 can be seen in this photo from Adam Block: www.caelumobservatory.com/gallery/n2992.shtml
I would expect the brighter galaxy to be more massive, but it appears to be falling into the dimmer one. Then again, I could easily be misreading it, and gravity is not necessarily intuitive at a galactic scale.
On top of the usual processing involving getting rid of cosmic rays, I also tried to alleviate some of the distracting bias stripes that were making the bridge details harder to see by simply lightening and darkening the appropriate parts by hand.
Color comes from PanSTARRS this time.
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
Luminosity: ACS/WFC F606W
Red: PanSTARRS z
Green: PanSTARRS i
Blue: PanSTARRS g
North is 20.29° clockwise from up.
A magnificent barred spiral galaxy with arms tightly wound into near continuous circles. This was colorized using PanSTARRS z/i/g survey data. I processed the center somewhat heavily to make the lines of dust more apparent.
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
Luminosity: ACS/WFC F606W
Red: PanSTARRS z
Green: PanSTARRS i
Blue: PanSTARRS g
North is 45.34° counter-clockwise from up.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy LRG-3-817, also known as SDSS J090122.37+181432.3. The galaxy, its image distorted by the effects of gravitational lensing, appears as a long arc to the left of the central galaxy cluster.
Gravitational lensing occurs when a large distribution of matter, such as a galaxy cluster, sits between Earth and a distant light source. As space is warped by massive objects, the light from the distant object bends as it travels to us and we see a distorted image of it. This effect was first predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Strong gravitational lenses provide an opportunity for studying properties of distant galaxies, since Hubble can resolve details within the multiple arcs that are one of the main results of gravitational lensing. An important consequence of lensing distortion is magnification, allowing us to observe objects that would otherwise be too far away and too faint to be seen. Hubble makes use of this magnification effect to study objects beyond the sensitivity of its 2.4-metre-diameter primary mirror, showing us the most distant galaxies humanity has ever encountered.
This lensed galaxy was found as part of the Sloan Bright Arcs Survey, which discovered some of the brightest gravitationally lensed high-redshift galaxies in the night sky.
Credit:
ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Allam et al.
A spiral galaxy that recently went through some interactive process, resulting in some stars strewn hither and thither. This viewpoint allows us to see that sections of the disk have been inclined away from the original plane of the galaxy. Dust fades into the background as soon as it loses its stellar backlight.
A nice, color, widefield view of this galaxy is available at the Legacy Survey viewer: legacysurvey.org/viewer?ra=317.3111&dec=-63.2898&...
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
All Channels: ACS/WFC F606W
North is 53.04° clockwise from up.
In a survey of 100,000 galaxies (called Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science, or CEERS), Webb spotted the most distant active supermassive black hole to date, plus two more small early black holes and 11 early galaxies. All of these objects existed in the first 1.1 billion years after the big bang.
Read more: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-detects-most-dista...
This image: Researchers using data and images from the James Webb Space Telescope’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey identified two supermassive black holes that are more similar in size to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy’s center, than other extremely distant galaxies observed earlier by other telescopes. Webb’s spectra show that these black holes weigh only 10 million times the mass of the Sun. Other very distant supermassive black holes we’ve long known about are 1 billion times the mass of the Sun.
Credits: Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI). Science: Steven Finkelstein (University of Texas at Austin), Dale Kocevski (Colby College), Pablo Arrabal Haro (NOIRLab).
Image description: A graphic titled “Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, Two Extremely Distant Active Supermassive Black Holes.” The graphic shows the redshift of two active supermassive black holes. At top right is the complete NIRCam image of the field. To its left is a large, continuous pull out, labeled NIRCam imaging, which shows the locations of two objects, with open white boxes. The image is filled with galaxies of different colors, shapes, and sizes. Two white lines from the image connect to pull outs that run to the left of two graphs at the bottom. In the inset images are blurry red dots. The top one reads CEERS 2782, 12.7 billion years. The bottom image reads CEERS 746, 12.8 billion years. To the right are two line graphs corresponding to the two highlighted black holes. These are labeled NIRSpec Microshutter Array Spectroscopy. They show the shift in the position of emission lines.
A mostly dark frame with some faint fuzzy dots, flanked by a copy of the same with some incomprehensible labels? This is far from beeing the most beautiful image I ever published, but it easily qualifies as the most interesting! However, it certainly needs quite some explanation:
The image shows a section of sky (roughly 8.5° x 6.5°) in the border area of the constellations Leo, Virgo and Coma Berenices that is home to the northern part of the famous Virgo Galaxy Cluster. This cluster harbors roughly 1300 galaxies and forms the heart of the larger Virgo Supercluster, of which our Milky Way is an outlying member.
Just right of and below the center of the image is Markarian's Chain, a stretch of galaxies that is called a chain because, when viewed from Earth, the galaxies lie along a smoothly curved line. It is named after the Armenian astrophysicist, B. E. Markarian, who discovered their common motion in the early 1960s.
Markarian's Chain was my primary target for this image. As I was running late that evening, I decided not to set up my telescope, but to shoot with my 200mm lens from a tripod equipped with a simple iOptron SkyTracker. Not the most impressive setup and, considering that I was imaging from my light polluted backyard (#5 on the Bortle scale) with a too short focal length, I was not expecting much of a result.
After setting up, I just let the camera shoot away and went for my well-deserved nights rest. The next day, after sorting out the frames with clouds, aircraft or satellite trails, I ended up with 290 shots of 30s each, summing up to 2h25min of usable data. After stacking and processing these frames, I got the above image.
First, I was happy that my primary target was visible at all, but then I started to notice many small galaxies in the image. I therefore started to scrutinize the image systematically. You can see the result in the copy on the right side, where I was able to identify more than 150 galaxies (yellow labels).
Now I was truly impressed. I remembered the Hubble Deep Filed (HDF), showing thousands of galaxies in the early universe and started to think of my image as my personal deep field (PDF)…LOL
The imaged galaxies are roughly 50-60 million lightyears away from earth. While this is a huge distance (it means the light my camera caught was emitted just after the dinosaurs were extinct), it still is a rather small distance on the cosmological scale of the Hubble Deep field.
I started wondering if there are more distant objects in my image. After a dedicated search, I really found some exotic and much more distant objects (red labels). The most distant of them is a quasar named Q1227+120. It has a measured redshift of z=2.458. You can translate this into a cosmological distance of mindboggling 19.2 billion lightyears! The light of this quasar was emitted 11.1 billion years ago. That’s 4/5th of the time that has elapsed since the big bang!
Of course, you can find many images of similar objects taken with giant, professional telescopes. But when I realized that I had imaged an object that almost lies “at the edge of the universe” from a tripod in my backyard, with a simple DSLR camera and a 200mm lens, I was absolutely flabbergasted!
A word of caution:
Even in giant telescopes, these quasars (Quasi Stellar Objects) are just tiny, star-like dots of light. In my image, they are at the very limit of discernibility and you will have to download and open the image in full resolution to see them. But they are there – trust me!
Acknowledgement:
My star charts and planetarium programs were unable to go deep enough for the data of the image.
For my "research" I had to get access to professional quality data and found these in the "Aladin sky atlas" developed at CDS, Strasbourg Observatory, France → 2000A&AS..143...33B and 2014ASPC..485..277B.
Aladin is a free interactive sky atlas, allowing the user to visualize digitized astronomical images or full surveys, superimpose entries from astronomical catalogues or databases, and interactively access related data and information from the Simbad database, the VizieR service and other archives for all known astronomical objects in the field. It was developed for professional astronomers, but it is also a great toy for the interested amateur.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy LRG-3-817, also known as SDSS J090122.37+181432.3. The galaxy, its image distorted by the effects of gravitational lensing, appears as a long arc to the left of the central galaxy cluster.
Gravitational lensing occurs when a large distribution of matter, such as a galaxy cluster, sits between Earth and a distant light source. As space is warped by massive objects, the light from the distant object bends as it travels to us and we see a distorted image of it. This effect was first predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Strong gravitational lenses provide an opportunity for studying properties of distant galaxies, since Hubble can resolve details within the multiple arcs that are one of the main results of gravitational lensing. An important consequence of lensing distortion is magnification, allowing us to observe objects that would otherwise be too far away and too faint to be seen. Hubble makes use of this magnification effect to study objects beyond those normally detectable with the sensitivity of its 2.4-meter-diameter primary mirror, showing us the most distant galaxies humanity has ever encountered.
This lensed galaxy was found as part of the Sloan Bright Arcs Survey, which discovered some of the brightest gravitationally lensed high-redshift galaxies in the night sky.
Text credit: European Space Agency
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Allam et al.
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2020/hubble-spies-gala...
A soft, fluffy, irregular dwarf galaxy with a few areas of star formation. Could be a nice place to live.
NASA/ESA/SDSS/Judy Schmidt
Color comes from this SDSS field:
dr12.sdss.org/fields/name?name=arp+264
HST Proposal:
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
Luminosity: ACS/WFC F606W
Red: SDSS i
Green: SDSS r
Blue: SDSS g
North is 59.29° counter-clockwise from up.
One of Webb’s most complex instrument modes is with the MIRI Medium Resolution Spectrometer (MRS). The MRS is an integral-field spectrograph, which provides spectral and spatial information simultaneously for the entire field of view. The spectrograph provides three-dimensional ‘data cubes’ in which every pixel in an image contains a unique spectrum. Such spectrographs are extremely powerful tools to study the composition and kinematics of astronomical objects, as they combine the benefits of both traditional imaging and spectroscopy.
“The MRS is designed to have a spectral resolving power (observed wavelength divided by the smallest detectable wavelength difference) of about 3,000. That is high enough to resolve key atomic and molecular features in a variety of environments. At the highest redshifts, the MRS will be able to study hydrogen emission from the first galaxies. At lower redshifts, it will probe molecular hydrocarbon features in dusty nearby galaxies and detect the bright spectral fingerprints of elements such as oxygen, argon, and neon that can tell us about the properties of ionized gas in the interstellar medium. Closer to home, the MRS will produce maps of spectral features due to water ice and simple organic molecules in giant planets in our own solar system and in planet-forming disks around other stars.
“In order to cover the wide 5 to 28 micron wavelength range as efficiently as possible, the MRS integral field units are broken up into twelve individual wavelength bands, each of which must be calibrated individually. Over the past few weeks, the MIRI team (a large international group of astronomers from the USA and Europe) has been focusing primarily on calibrating the imaging components of the MRS. They want to ensure that all twelve bands are spatially well aligned with each other and with the MIRI Imager, so that it can be used to place targets accurately into the smaller MRS field of view. We show some early test results from this alignment process, illustrating the image quality achieved in each of the twelve bands using observations of the bright K giant star HD 37122 (located in the southern sky near the Large Magellanic Cloud).
“Once the spatial alignment and image quality of the several bands are well characterized, the MIRI team will prioritize calibrating the spectroscopic response of the instrument. This step will include determining the wavelength solution and spectral resolution throughout each of the twelve fields of view using observations of compact emission-line objects and diffuse planetary nebulae ejected by dying stars. We show the exceptional spectral resolving power of the MRS with a small segment of a spectrum obtained from recent engineering observations of the active galactic nucleus at the core of Seyfert galaxy NGC 6552. Once these basic instrument characteristics are established, it will be possible to calibrate MRS so that it is ready to support the wealth of Cycle 1 science programs due to start in a few short weeks.”
Read more: blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/06/16/webbs-mid-infrared-spectro...
This image: This portion of the MIRI MRS wavelength range shows engineering calibration data obtained of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 6552 (red line) in the constellation Draco. The strong emission feature is due to molecular hydrogen, with an additional weaker feature nearby. The blue line shows a lower spectral resolution Spitzer IRS spectrum of a similar galaxy for comparison. The Webb test observations were obtained to establish the wavelength calibration of the spectrograph. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the MIRI Consortium.
A beautiful collision is underway.
A good color view is available from the DECaLS viewer: legacysurvey.org/viewer?ra=148.2908&dec=7.8657&zo...
Data from the following proposal is used to create this image:
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
All channels: ACS/WFC F606W
North is 23.75° counter-clockwise from up.
While pleasing to the eye, this galaxy seems less peculiar than some of the other galaxies in Arp's catalog. Given that he was looking for ejections from the centers of galaxies, I am guessing he was interested in the very bright piece of arm that seems somewhat broken off from the rest of the galaxy. Looks like a lot of star formation, there.
A color widefield view is available at the Legacy Survey viewer: legacysurvey.org/viewer?ra=15.1909&dec=-9.1851&la...
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
All Channels: ACS/WFC F606W
North is 0.97° counter-clockwise from up.
I think there are at least two galaxies here in the midst of a very confusing merger. I mean, all mergers and many galaxies are confusing to some extent, but this one really confuses me. I've marked what I think are two galactic nuclei. On the other hand, it looks a bit like a snake turning its head and opening its mouth, which is cool.
There is a faint line going diagonally across the left half of the image. This is possibly some space junk or some other small object that is close to Earth. I normally remove these, but this one is less obtrusive, making it a good example without detracting too much from the image. Sometimes these are much brighter, and are a big hassle to deal with.
A widefield version is available from the Legacy Survey viewer: legacysurvey.org/viewer?ra=21.3389&dec=34.0239&la...
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
All Channels: ACS/WFC F606W
North is 23.44° clockwise from up.
Interesting galaxy with some vague spiral rotational patterns to it, and a bright node at the end of an arm. Looks a bit like a smaller dwarf merging with a larger dwarf irregular galaxy.
A widefield color view is available at the Legacy Survey viewer: legacysurvey.org/viewer?ra=163.6506&dec=56.9876&l...
Establishing HST's Low Redshift Archive of Interacting Systems
All Channels: ACS/WFC F606W
North is 16.86° clockwise from up.
October 2017
The sky glows red as flame amid battering waves and pattering rain along Lake Superior in autumn.
Copyright © 2017 Richard Thompson.
Still cruising in the vicinity of Abell 2029, the Hullbull RST nabs an image of part of a nearby nebula that exhibits somewhat similar geometry to the Pillars of Creation. Colored in one of the many Hullbull palettes, the red/yellow areas of the nebula represent sulfur, green represents ionized oxygen, and blue represents hydrogen. Areas of dusty dark nebula can be seen in the nebula formation. Background stars and stars within the nebula are either obscured or exhibit significant red shift.
Not a real space image. Light art.
Composite of two unaltered images. One image using Waterworld technique/100mm lens to create nebula patterns (source light is dry grass, green shrubs, yellow building wall with large red letters in bright daylight, and a hand-held black matte background). Second long exposure, 100mm lens (base layer/EXIF data) to create stars; several partially masked "burns" to create segregated star color patterns using water droplet technique and red, white, blue, yellow colored LEDs; cover/recompose, create larger stars using white and blue LEDs, with and without diffraction filter. (Am thinking the white stars might have looked better without the diffraction filter...?)
Near NGC3079 is the twin quasar (PGC 2518326) lies at redshift z = 1.41 (8.7 billion ly). "The Twin Quasar (also known as Twin QSO, Double Quasar, SBS 0957+561, TXS 0957+561, Q0957+561 or QSO 0957+561 A/B), was discovered in 1979 and was the first identified gravitationally lensed object. It is a quasar that appears as two images, a result from gravitational lensing caused by the galaxy YGKOW G1 that is located directly between Earth and the quasar".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Quasar
April 14th 2023
Celestron RASA 8"
ZWO183mc pro
ZWO EAF
Optolong l-Pro
ZWO air pro
Sky-Watcher HEQ5 Pro
24 mins Lights Flats , Darks and Bias.
Gain 122 at -10C
Processed in Pixinsight