NGC 4490 from Hubble

Another galaxy from the Hubble Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS). This rather messy assortment of star formation is said to be a barred spiral galaxy, but I confess I have a hard time seeing it even in widefield view. It kinda looks like all bar and no spiral to me. I wonder what it looked like before its interaction with NGC 4485? From our vantage point in spacetime, we’ll never know, but right now we can see the interaction has caused such a ruckus of star formation that the whole thing appears quite blue and full of young stars and pinkish clouds of ionized hydrogen. These hot-burning stars also explode relatively quickly, making this galaxy host to many supernovas.

Image:

Full quality here: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52292678410_2a2a10aa1f_o.png

Details:

All data was taken from the following proposals: https://archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?id=13364&mission=hst, https://archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=13773

Processing:

Red: WFC3/UVIS F657N + WFC3/UVIS F814W
Green: WFC3/UVIS F438W + WFC3/UVIS F555W
Blue: WFC3/UVIS F275W + WFC3/UVIS F336W
Linear:
- Combine color channels
- Deconvolution
- Noise reduction
Non-linear
- GHS stretch

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