Starship Asterisk*

40 years ago a photo of the Sombrero Galaxy reached out and grabbed my attention, and I knew not why at the time. Now I think I see why.

As the Voyager and other images of Saturn and our understanding of the complex interaction with gravity and its moons formed the intricate structure of Saturn's rings; the Sombrero Galaxy looks to have similar gravitational structures to its shape.

The Sombrero is most unique in all the photos of galaxies I've ever seen;
it has a very large dust-free spherical 'middle'; mirroring the shape of the central bulge, but six times the dimensions; and a very flat dust disk.
This APOD photo shows a hint of Saturn-like ring organization of the dust disk; which I suspect is a gravitational effect of whatever is orbiting in the huge 'middle' area.

The very flat dust disk, the very spherical and very large 'middle area', the clearness of the 'atmosphere' in the middle area; all suggest to me that the old and stable stars in this large middle region produce intense solar winds which sweep it clean of dust and gasses. Because the central region is so big, the gravity is like Saturn to the rings, it has the dust lane very controlled. It shares qualities of shape and spacings and gravity influences like Saturn's rings. Gaps etc.

My imagining is; the orbiting suns in the middle area are organized into shells of oscillating densities, which causes the dust disk to have corresponding variations; all by gravitational tidal effects.

This makes me curious about what is lurking in the very core.

http://www.imagehosting.us
Try here Harry. It is really easy to use. just register

B.C. Stanley wrote:I have what might be a better processed picture of those two whatever-they-are (they may not be galaxies) which might help shed some light on the matter. Problem is, the protocol of this group is so user-unfriendly, I haven't been able to get the image posted, no matter how hard I've tried.

Forum does not have image attaching enabled. As a work-around, I host stuff here and then paste in my post hyperlink they provide.

List of other colliding galaxies

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apo ... +colliding

harry wrote:Has anybody got a better image of the colliding galaxies.

looks great

reminds me of
APOD: 2004 June 12 - NGC 4676: When Mice Collide

and

http://www.aao.gov.au/images/captions/aat055.html but this one is by itself

I have what might be a better processed picture of those two whatever-they-are (they may not be galaxies) which might help shed some light on the matter. Problem is, the protocol of this group is so user-unfriendly, I haven't been able to get the image posted, no matter how hard I've tried.

Please check my posting of 1/29/06: "The Sombrero Galaxy Photo Enigmas". Hopefully, some day, I'll figure out how to get the accompanying image posted. Meanwhile, I'll try some image processing on your posted image and see what shows up. -- B.C. Stanley

A most curious item.

A different thread questioner was thinking that it is two stars, so I looked and it looks like two galaxies. Definately two galaxies, not stars losing atmosphere. Although gas giants might look like that, hard to tell.

If it is two galaxies they are so identical as to be suspect. There are small differences, but . . .

Another idea is ; can there be a strong gravitational lens, like a massive dark object directly in front of the one galaxy and it is lensing it into two !!

Or would it lens it into 4. I did see a photo of a star being lensed into four distinct objects.

The galaxy would be much further away, and a massive dark object might give off some other clues to its presence other than lensing the galaxy into two images.

How costly would it be, and how long a lead time is necessary to inspect this object with other frequency telescopes, and visible?

Or is this an image processing error and somehow this galaxy got imposed in the photo twice?

There are enough differences to feel that they are two distinctly different objects, and they are galaxies by the details.

orin stepanek wrote:They don't look identical to me. The one on the right looks a little bit fuzzier.
Orin

the right one is part of the left one. the left one is composite of right one and optical image. see APOD link I posted for details.

I will make a note and email to hubble site so that may give us info on the images. If no info maybe they will go out of their way to do so.

We shall wait and see.


Happy New Year.

They don't look identical to me. The one on the right looks a little bit fuzzier.
Orin

I have spoken about these interesting galaxies in previous posts. Maybe with enough interest, Hubble might be focused on them for clearer better images. Don't know about larger yet though, but it would be nice. We might have to wait for an "Outrageously large telescope" to be built, or the OWL. Now that will be big at 90 to 100 meters optical.
http://www.eso.org/projects/owl/OWL_design.html

these things are pretty bright in infrared. the hint to gravitational lensing, I guess? EDIT: I followed some links and made smaller snapshot for you:



left - optic/infrared combined, right - infrared only. I guess we just can't have better look, because there seem to be no larger images of sombrero galaxy itself.

Has anybody got a better image of the colliding galaxies.

looks great

reminds me of
APOD: 2004 June 12 - NGC 4676: When Mice Collide

and

http://www.aao.gov.au/images/captions/aat055.html but this one is by itself

It is worth 5 minutes to make a picture of what you are talking about 8)

Your referring to the double at the bottom of the page.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060115.html

I also was looking at the galaxy itself. It is easy to see the the backside of the disc through the center's haze. The Sombrero is indeed an interesting galaxy. I don't believe I've seen another shaped quite like it.
Orin

In the magnificant Sombrero galaxy photo of Jan 15 2006, down around the 7:00 o'clock position is an interesting feature that looks like double pinwheel galaxies.

I'm curious whether it has every featured on APOD, how close together the two pinwheel galaxies might be to one another, or whether it's a gravitational lens effect.

[edited Jan 16 to Jan 15, see link in a post below - makc]