APOD: Spiral Galaxy NGC 5033 (2012 Aug 17)

[APOD Robot]

Spiral Galaxy NGC 5033

Explanation: Magnificent island universe NGC 5033 lies some 40 million light-years away in the well-trained northern constellation Canes Venatici. This telescopic portrait reveals striking details of dust lanes winding near the galaxy's bright core and majestic but relatively faint spiral arms. Speckled with pink star forming regions and massive blue star clusters, the arms span over 100,000 light-years, similar in size to our own spiral Milky Way. A well-studied example of the class of Seyfert active galaxies, NGC 5033 has a core that is very bright and variable. The emission is likely powered by a supermassive black hole. The bright nucleus and rotational center of the galaxy also seem to be slightly offset, suggesting NGC 5033 is the result of an ancient galaxy merger.

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[John111111]

Looking at these spiral galaxies, I can't help but think of water in a sink, going down a drain, what do you think?

[Lordcat Darkstar]

Looking at these spiral galaxies, I can't help but think of water in a sink, going down a drain, what do you think?

Auntie Am! Auntie Am! It's a twister. It's a twister!

[spectre0827]

Is there someplace where one can order high resolution posters of the images shown on APOD? I would really like to be able to select an image and have it printed for framing...
Thank you very much.

[emc]

Looking at these spiral galaxies, I can't help but think of water in a sink, going down a drain, what do you think?

First I think… how beautiful!!! But then I think... what if there are hostile and aggressive creatures living there!? And they have the knowhow to traverse the expanse of the universe in a reasonable timeframe!? And they learn that we named our galaxy the “Milky Way”! Not a very intimidating name for a galaxy if you’re an aggressive hostile alien.

[higgles]

lovely pic but when will we get imagery that`s ultra crisp ? is it even possible at these distances ?

[Chris Peterson]

Looking at these spiral galaxies, I can't help but think of water in a sink, going down a drain, what do you think?

But in a spiral galaxy, no material is moving in towards the center. If your sink worked this way, the water would never drain.

[Chris Peterson]

lovely pic but when will we get imagery that`s ultra crisp ? is it even possible at these distances ?

The picture looks fuzzy because it is oversampled: there are too many pixels given the actual resolution. Basically, it's the sort of fuzziness you get when you blow an image up too much- empty resolution.

This galaxy is about 700 arcseconds across; really superb imaging conditions allow a small ground-based telescope to record about 1 arcsecond resolution, but that is rare. 2-3 arcsecond resolution is much more common. So in reality, this galaxy can be displayed with just a few hundred pixels, and doesn't benefit from the 1500 or so pixels of the full size image. Shrinking it down makes everything look sharper, and doesn't result in any loss of information.

[rstevenson]

lovely pic but when will we get imagery that`s ultra crisp ? is it even possible at these distances ?

This image was taken from a ground-based observatory, so there are limitations. Hubble could do it crisper if someone wanted to point Hubble at it -- that is, if there was a suitable scientific need to do so -- but so far they haven't. Or at least I couldn't find such an image at the Hubblesite Gallery.

Rob

[orin stepanek]

Looking at these spiral galaxies, I can't help but think of water in a sink, going down a drain, what do you think?

Reminds me more of a hurricane from above; though it is quite different! It is a beautiful photo though!

[Sowndbyte]

What does the author mean by "well trained" constellation ?

[Chris Peterson]

What does the author mean by "well trained" constellation ? :?:

Just a little play on words, considering Canes Venatici represents the hunting dogs.

[bystander]

Is there someplace where one can order high resolution posters of the images shown on APOD? I would really like to be able to select an image and have it printed for framing...
Thank you very much.

Below each image is a credit line that includes links to the photographer's website or email address.

[revloren]

Looking at these spiral galaxies, I can't help but think of water in a sink, going down a drain, what do you think?

But in a spiral galaxy, no material is moving in towards the center. If your sink worked this way, the water would never drain.

If you click on the image you get the same view that shows up on my desktop background, which shows that the image is closely cropped.

It actually looks better from wider perspective, though the galaxy becomes a little smaller.

[Boomer12k]

I think we need to call it..."The Crab Galaxy"....it has claws and legs....

Great Pic.

:---[===] *

[Diana]

Does anyone know if the Hubble ST has ever been trained onto that purple pansey-like nebula way up high in the back arm(picture perspective)?

Diana

[Grizzly]

As this is not seen "full-face", how can we tell whether the arms at the top of the picture are closer to us or farther away?

[saturno2]

This is a beautiful image.
NGC 5033 is a galaxy spiral of type Seyfer, very bright in the center.
Well, but I think that in the center of the galaxies there aren¨t
black holes.
I think there is other system.

[neufer]

First I think… how beautiful!!! But then I think... what if there are hostile and aggressive creatures living there!? And they have the knowhow to traverse the expanse of the universe in a reasonable timeframe!? And they learn that we named our galaxy the “Milky Way”! Not a very intimidating name for a galaxy if you’re an aggressive hostile alien.

My children's old swim team were known as the Gateway Guppies...and they competed quite well against "Barracuda" & the like.

[neufer]

NGC 5033 is a galaxy spiral of type Seyfer, very bright in the center.

Well, but I think that in the center of the galaxies there aren¨t black holes.

I think there is other system.

As this is not seen "full-face", how can we tell whether
the arms at the top of the picture are closer to us or farther away?

[neufer]

What does the author mean by "well trained" constellation ?

Just a little play on words, considering Canes Venatici represents the hunting dogs.

So it isn't really "house trained" then.

[Beyond]

What does the author mean by "well trained" constellation ?

Just a little play on words, considering Canes Venatici represents the hunting dogs.

So it isn't really "house trained" then.

Well... you won't really know unless you bring it in for awhile.

[Ann]

Adam Block, guardian of the true-color universe, strikes again!

Ann

[Ann]

Diana wrote:

Does anyone know if the Hubble ST has ever been trained onto that purple pansey-like nebula way up high in the back arm(picture perspective)?

I'd say, probably not. I googled "Hubble NGC 5033" and got only one hit, this one. It shows the area near the center of NGC 5033.

Even if there had been a Hubble image of NGC 5033 which actually showed the part of the galaxy where the nebula is situated, it is not certain that the nebula would have looked very interesting. The reason is that the Hubble Space Telescope, when it photographs galaxies, uses narrowband filters that are usually not well suited to reveal a lot of detail in nebulae. Nebulae emit light of extremely specific wavelengths, and to detect them you need either a filter that detects that specific wavelength or a broadband filter that detects that particular wavelength along with several others. Hubble, when photographing galaxies, normally neither uses a Ha filter at 656 nm (to detect the specific red color of nebulae) nor a red broadband filter. Instead Hubble normally uses an infrared filter (often at 814 nm) or another red filter at, say, 625 nm.

Adam Block uses broadband filters, so his imagery detects details (such as color) in nebulae that Hubble would normally miss.

Ann

[Ann]

As this is not seen "full-face", how can we tell whether the arms at the top of the picture are closer to us or farther away?

We can see thick dust lanes near the nucleus, and we can see that the dust lanes "below" the nucleus look thick and brown, but the dust lanes "above" the nucleus are barely visible at all.

That's not because there are no dust lanes "above" the nucleus. Instead, if the dust lanes are closer to us than the nucleus, then much of the light from the innermost part of the galaxy has to pass through those dust lanes before it reaches us. But the dust stops most of the light from passing through them, so the dust lanes look very dark.

When the dust lanes are farther away from us than the nucleus, they don't stop much of the light from the inner parts of the galaxy from reaching us. In some cases they may even act as reflection nebulae, reflecting light from the nucleus back at us, so that the dust lanes look bright instead of dark.

The fact that the dust lanes are so much darker on one side than the other shows clearly which side of the galaxy is closer to us.

Ann