by Ann » Fri Feb 12, 2021 6:31 am
Can't resist comparing the Eye Galaxy with the Black Eye Galaxy, M64. Both galaxies have prominent inner dust lanes near their nucleus, although the dust lane of M64 is much darker and more startling than the inner dust lane of NGC 1350. NGC 1350, by contrast, has a very prominent ring outside its central bulge, and not much of a disk outside this ring.
NGC 1350 and M64 are classified as non-barred spirals with tightly wound arms. They have very similar colors, with a B-V index of 0.87 for NGC 1350 and 0.84 for M64. This means that both galaxies are relatively red and relatively low in star formation.
Remarkably, I could find only one other reasonably good picture of NGC 1350 on the net, and I didn't much like that picture because I found its colors weird.
The bluish cast of the ESO image may be due to the fact that the exposure through a blue filter was twice as long as the exposures through the other filters. At the same time, the fact that a disk is visible outside the prominent ring of NGC 1350 in ESO's picture, which is not really the case in the Selby/Keller image, may be due to the fact that ESO used an infrared filter to bring out the presence of small cool stars in the disk.
Finally, it's really quite weird that this elegant galaxy is so unknown, and has been photographed so rarely. It must be the galaxy's southern position, and the "northern bias" of astronomy (due to the fact that most of the Earth's astronomers live north of the equator), that is to blame for the snubbing of NGC 1350.
Ann
[float=left][img3="Spiral galaxy NGC 1350, the Eye Galaxy. Photo: Mike Selby, Warren Keller"]https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2102/NGC1350_crop1024.jpg[/img3][/float][float=right][img3="M64, the Black Eye Galaxy. Photo: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona."]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/M64_Blackeye_Galaxy_from_the_Mount_Lemmon_SkyCenter_Schulman_Telescope_courtesy_Adam_Block.jpg[/img3][/float]
[clear][/clear]
Can't resist comparing the Eye Galaxy with the Black Eye Galaxy, M64. Both galaxies have prominent inner dust lanes near their nucleus, although the dust lane of M64 is much darker and more startling than the inner dust lane of NGC 1350. NGC 1350, by contrast, has a very prominent ring outside its central bulge, and not much of a disk outside this ring.
NGC 1350 and M64 are classified as non-barred spirals with tightly wound arms. They have very similar colors, with a B-V index of 0.87 for NGC 1350 and 0.84 for M64. This means that both galaxies are relatively red and relatively low in star formation.
[float=left][img3="NGC 1350. Photo: ESO - http://www.eso.org/gallery/v/ESOPIA/Galaxies/phot-31a-05.tif.html."]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Ngc_1350.jpg[/img3][/float]
Remarkably, I could find only one other reasonably good picture of NGC 1350 on the net, and I didn't much like that picture because I found its colors weird.
The bluish cast of the ESO image may be due to the fact that the exposure through a blue filter was twice as long as the exposures through the other filters. At the same time, the fact that a disk is visible outside the prominent ring of NGC 1350 in ESO's picture, which is not really the case in the Selby/Keller image, may be due to the fact that ESO used an infrared filter to bring out the presence of small cool stars in the disk.
Finally, it's really quite weird that this elegant galaxy is so unknown, and has been photographed so rarely. It must be the galaxy's southern position, and the "northern bias" of astronomy (due to the fact that most of the Earth's astronomers live north of the equator), that is to blame for the snubbing of NGC 1350.
Ann