Tag: Galaxies

Messier 51 from Hubble

The graceful, winding arms of the majestic whirlpool galaxy appear like a grand spiral staircase sweeping through space. They are actually long lanes of stars and gas laced with dust. This sharpest-ever image of the Whirlpool Galaxy illustrates a spiral galaxy’s grand design, from its curving spiral arms, where young stars reside, to its yellowish central core, a home of older stars. The bright pink regions display large bursts of H-alpha, where new stars are formed. I would highly recommend viewing this image on gigapan, where you […]

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NGC 3314 from Hubble

Update 11/17/2021: This image was featured by NASA’s APOD! You can check out their version here: https://theastroenthusiast.com/ngc-3314-from-hubble/ This object is not one but two – two galaxies seeming to overlap by mere chance. The spiral galaxy in front is viewed nearly face-on, its pinwheel shape defined by young, blue, bright star clusters. Against the glow of the background galaxy, dark swirling lanes of interstellar dust appear to dominate the face-on spiral structure. The dust lanes are surprisingly pervasive, and this remarkable pair of overlapping galaxies is one […]

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NGC 6814 from Hubble

Together with irregular galaxies, spiral galaxies make up approximately 60 percent of the galaxies in the local universe. However, despite their prevalence, each spiral galaxy is unique — like snowflakes, no two are alike. This is demonstrated by the striking face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6814, whose luminous nucleus and spectacular sweeping arms, rippled with an intricate pattern of dark dust, are captured in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. NGC 6814 has an extremely bright nucleus, a telltale sign that the galaxy is a Seyfert galaxy. These […]

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The ghostly shell of Andromeda

This image, I think, is one of the best images I have produced. It’s absolutely incredible to me the vastness of this object — it would take light 200,000 years to cross this galaxy. 26 hours of pure data from a bortle 1 site were used to create the incredibly deep astrograph. The faint shell around the bright galaxy was most likely created by past gravitational interactions with other galaxies. Image: Equipment: Nikon D90 Sigma 300mm prime lens Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Star Adventurer Tripod Bahnitov Mask Intervalometer […]

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NGC 4651 from Hubble

This remarkable spiral galaxy, known as NGC 4651, may look serene and peaceful as it swirls in the vast, silent emptiness of space, but don’t be fooled — it keeps a violent secret. It is believed that this galaxy consumed another smaller galaxy to become the large and beautiful spiral that we observe today. Image: Details: All data was taken from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys from the following proposal: https://archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=12282 Processing: Create Superlum by averaging both channels Deconvolute lum Denoise lum RGB combine Color calibration ArcsinH […]

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NGC 4676 from Hubble

Update 10/4/2021: This image has been chosen as an APOD by NASA! You can view their write-up here: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap211004.html. These two mighty galaxies are pulling each other apart. Known as “The Mice” because they have such long tails, each spiral galaxy has likely already passed through the other. They will probably collide again and again until they coalesce. The long tails are created by the relative difference between gravitational pulls on the near and far parts of each galaxy. Because the distances are so large, the cosmic […]

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The Antennae Galaxies from Hubble

The galaxies in this image — also known as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 — are locked in a deadly embrace. Once normal, sedate spiral galaxies like the Milky Way, the pair have spent the past few hundred million years sparring with one another. This clash is so violent that stars have been ripped from their host galaxies to form a streaming arc between the two. In wide-field images of the pair the reason for their name becomes clear — far-flung stars and streamers of gas stretch out into […]

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M83 from Hubble

This is definitely the largest and most beautiful image I have processed to date. Hubble took a stunning 6 panel mosiac in 5 different color bands to create this awesome astrograph. I highly recommend checking out the full mosiac hosted on gigapan: http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/227085. The Hubble photograph captures thousands of star clusters, hundreds of thousands of individual stars, and “ghosts” of dead stars called supernova remnants. The galactic panorama unveils a tapestry of the drama of stellar birth and death spread across 50,000 light-years. The newest generations of […]

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NGC 7049 from Hubble

The NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured this image of NGC 7049, a mysterious looking galaxy on the border between spiral and elliptical galaxies. NGC 7049 is found in the constellation of Indus, and is the brightest of a cluster of galaxies, a so-called Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG). Typical BCGs are some of the oldest and most massive galaxies. They provide excellent opportunities for astronomers to study the elusive globular clusters lurking within. The globular clusters in NGC 7049 are seen as the sprinkling of small faint […]

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NGC 520 from Hubble

Update 9/7/2021: This image has been chosen as and APOD by NASA! You can view their write-up here: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210907.html. This galaxy is just so bizarre that I had to process it! NGC 520 is the product of a collision between two disc galaxies that started 300 million years ago. It exemplifies the middle stages of the merging process: the discs of the parent galaxies have merged together, but the nuclei have not yet coalesced. It features an odd-looking tail of stars and a prominent dust lane that […]

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