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.
Tags: Hubble HST galaxy dust crepuscular rays subtraction model astronomy tidal features Legacy Survey DECam DECaLS IC 5063
Hubble turned 32 yesterday. This was the target chosen to celebrate that event. Tight groupings such as this are a relatively rare sight, and this one is so compact that there are multiple overlapping galaxies along our line of sight.
Anyway, just thought I'd share my version of it. I wanted to show it with a lighter background and a more gentle touch on the color saturation levels. There's an H-alpha filter available. I chose not to use it.
You can see the official version over yonder.
Red: WFC3/UVIS F814W
Green: WFC3/UVIS F606W
Blue: WFC3/UVIS F475W
North is NOT up. It is 41.6° counter-clockwise from up.
Tags: HCG40 galaxies cluster galaxy dust spiral elliptical overlapping anniversary HST Hubble
Spitzer, WISE, MeerKAT
The MeerKAT mosaic was released recently, giving me a chance to finally combine the Spitzer/WISE infrared mosaic with MeerKAT's radio data. MeerKAT data are overlaid in white.
Annotations from arxiv.org/abs/2201.10541
White overlay: SARAO/MeerKAT (1.28 GHz)
Red: Spitzer/MIPS1 (24μm)
Green: WISE/W3 (12μm)
Blue: Spitzer/IRAC4 (8μm)
North is NOT up. It is around 60° counter-clockwise from up.
Tags: infrared radio spitzer wise meerkat milky way sag a* sagittarius center
Well-known for its similarity to the Milky Way, looking at NGC 6744 is kind of like looking into a cosmic mirror. We will almost certainly never know what our own galaxy looks like from afar, but we can look across the void and try to find something very similar.
Just like we see here, The Milky Way is known to have a central bar full of older, yellower stars, and a bulge. Some say the bulge is peanut-shaped, but I am sure it's more of an X, though I can see how it could also be described as a peanut. I have noted the X feature in the cores of a few other galaxies, and while it seems to be a fairly common morphology, I think it's only visible when viewed edge-on, so we can't see it here.
Moving out from the core, dusty lanes and pink nebulas of star-formation are also evident. When given a wider field of view, two arms a little more than vaguely defined can be seen. Numerous spurs and disconnects give it a halfway chaotic or fluffy, flocculent appearance.
I was gathering a few resources and references here and there to attempt an illustration of the Milky Way and Andromeda paired together from some distant vantage point when I discovered this galaxy was indeed in the Hubble archive. Not only that, but it's got a fantastic set of filters to work with and is part of the wonderful Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS) which is chock full of intimate views of a variety of galaxies.
This image is possible thanks to the following two proposals:
LEGUS: Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey - HST Proposal 13364
H-alpha LEGUS: Unveiling the Interplay Between Stars, Star Clusters, and Ionized Gas - HST Proposal 13773
Note: Data for this image can be downloaded from the HLA, but the processing is better if you download it from this page: archive.stsci.edu/prepds/legus/dataproducts-public.html
The F657N data is not on the LEGUS page and must be obtained from the HLA as of this writing. 2017/07/14 Additional note - get the drc file from DADS instead of the drz. It won't open with FITS Liberator, but you can open it with SAOImage DS9, resave it, and then use Liberator.
Red: WFC3/UVIS F657N + WFC3/UVIS F814W
Green: WFC3/UVIS F555W
Blue: WFC3/UVIS F275W + WFC3/UVIS F336W + WFC3/UVIS F438W
North is 148.8° clockwise from up.
Tags: Hubble HST Spiral Galaxy dust LEGUS H-alpha ultraviolet near infrared visible 13364 13773
Yes, you can use this image! The attribution line is:
NASA / ESA / CSA / Judy Schmidt
A very processed (maybe even over-processed) version of Jupiter from JWST. Here we're viewing the planet only in infrared, and the ring, usually invisible, is plain for all to see. The colors are definitely unusual.
There is some discussion over what the red blip at the south pole and the disconnected layer of atmosphere on the eastern limb are. Real? Artifacts? We'll wait for the scientists to figure it out, but I'm leaning toward real. :)
Red (screen): NIRCam F322W2-F323N (this is not a subtraction function, both filters were used at the same time)
Blue: NIRCam F212N
Background is a grayscale combination of both filters. There were gaps in the data that had to be filled in using either filter to complete the other.
Tags: JWST Infrared Jupiter atmosphere aurora Europa Great Red Spot