by Ann » Sun Feb 02, 2020 10:19 am
Alex515 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2020 9:09 am
Hi,
The image is both gorgeous and impressive when seen at full resolution. What are the two red dots seen right and left of the arc bow ?There are also some green dots in the background, they look more like background galaxies.
Alex
Hi Alex! You gave me a tough nut to crack there. In fact, I wasn't able to crack it!
As for the two red dots, they are most likely some highly dust-reddened objects that were detected by Spitzer's longest wavelength filter. To me they don't look like baby stars in the process of forming, though.
I agree with you that the green objects at 8 o'clock (or 8.30) and 6 o'clock (or 6.30) look very much like galaxies. I'd be very happy to tell you the designations of these galaxies, if I knew where to look for them so that I could find them and identify them. I find it very hard to "translate" this Spitzer image into a visual image that I can use to estimate the positions of the galaxies, so I would know where to look for them.
Zeta Ophiuchi in infrared light.
Photo: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Spitzer Space Telescope
From Rho to Zeta Ophiuchi and the Galactic center.
Photo: Scott Rosen. Full size here.
If you take a look at Scott Rosen's image at right, you can easily find Zeta Ophiuchi. It is the blue-white star at right that is surrounded by a very big red emission nebula. If you look carefully, you should be able to see an rather long undulating dust lane cutting through the upper part of this red nebula, relatively far from Zeta Ophiuchi. Is this undulating dust lane the glowing shock front that we can see in today's APOD? Who knows?
You can see that there is a "fainter but still bright" blue star to the left of the glowing wall in the APOD. Is that the blue-white star that you can see in Scott Rosen's image quite far to the upper left of Zeta Ophiuchi, well away from the large red nebula? Who knows? But if "the other blue star" in today's APOD really is that blue-white star in Scott Rosen's image, then the star is Eta Ophiuchi.
That's as far as I can get, sorry. I haven't been able to find any background galaxies in the vicinity of Eta Ophiuchi. You should bear in mind, too, that at the position of Eta we are getting closer and closer to the center of the Milky Way, and we can expect all sorts of interesting objects to be located there in our own galaxy.
Ann
[quote=Alex515 post_id=299248 time=1580634578]
Hi,
The image is both gorgeous and impressive when seen at full resolution. What are the two red dots seen right and left of the arc bow ?There are also some green dots in the background, they look more like background galaxies.
Alex
[/quote]
Hi Alex! You gave me a tough nut to crack there. In fact, I wasn't able to crack it! :(
As for the two red dots, they are most likely some highly dust-reddened objects that were detected by Spitzer's longest wavelength filter. To me they don't look like baby stars in the process of forming, though.
I agree with you that the green objects at 8 o'clock (or 8.30) and 6 o'clock (or 6.30) look very much like galaxies. I'd be very happy to tell you the designations of these galaxies, if I knew where to look for them so that I could find them and identify them. I find it very hard to "translate" this Spitzer image into a visual image that I can use to estimate the positions of the galaxies, so I would know where to look for them.
[float=left][img2]https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2002/ZetaOph_spitzer_960.jpg[/img2][c][size=85]Zeta Ophiuchi in infrared light.
Photo: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Spitzer Space Telescope[/size][/c][/float] [float=right][img2]http://www.astronomersdoitinthedark.com/images/product/images/ZetaOph-50-6D-NoFilt-200-2014-0504-0620-0621-0622--0623-55x600-RGB---47x600-Ha--640x.jpg[/img2][c][size=85]From Rho to Zeta Ophiuchi and the Galactic center.
Photo: Scott Rosen. Full size [url=http://www.astronomersdoitinthedark.com/images/product/images/ZetaOph-50-6D-NoFilt-200-2014-0504-0620-0621-0622--0623-55x600-RGB---47x600-Ha--3072x.jpg]here[/url].[/size][/c][/float]
If you take a look at Scott Rosen's image at right, you can easily find Zeta Ophiuchi. It is the blue-white star at right that is surrounded by a very big red emission nebula. If you look carefully, you should be able to see an rather long undulating dust lane cutting through the upper part of this red nebula, relatively far from Zeta Ophiuchi. Is this undulating dust lane the glowing shock front that we can see in today's APOD? Who knows?
You can see that there is a "fainter but still bright" blue star to the left of the glowing wall in the APOD. Is that the blue-white star that you can see in Scott Rosen's image quite far to the upper left of Zeta Ophiuchi, well away from the large red nebula? Who knows? But if "the other blue star" in today's APOD really is that blue-white star in Scott Rosen's image, then the star is Eta Ophiuchi.
That's as far as I can get, sorry. I haven't been able to find any background galaxies in the vicinity of Eta Ophiuchi. You should bear in mind, too, that at the position of Eta we are getting closer and closer to the center of the Milky Way, and we can expect all sorts of interesting objects to be located there in our own galaxy.
Ann