Found Images: 2018 September

[geckzilla]

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Have you seen a great image or video somewhere that you think would make a great APOD? Nominate it for APOD! Please post as much information here as you have about the image/video with a link to any source(s) for it you know of here, and the editors will take a look.

When posting the image itself, please do not post anything larger than a thumbnail here; please honor the copyright holder's copyright.

Please keep hotlinked images under 400K.

Thank you!

<< Previously

[starsurfer]

NGC 5256
https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1720/
Copyright: NASA, ESA

Click to view full size image

[starsurfer]

vdB55 and DG 75
http://www.atacama-photographic-observa ... php?id=100
Copyright: Thierry Demange, Richard Galli and Thomas Petit

[starsurfer]

California Nebula (NGC 1499)
http://www.cxielo.ch/gallery/v/nebulae/ ... x.jpg.html
Copyright: Martin Rusterholz

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Jacoby 1
http://www.pbase.com/skybox/image/167609366
Copyright: Kevin Quin

[starsurfer]

NGC 2997
http://www.caelumobservatory.com/gallery/n2997.shtml
Copyright: Adam Block/ChileScope

Click to view full size image

[starsurfer]

Vela Supernova Remnant
http://outters.fr/wp/vela1-hoo-rgb/
Copyright: Ciel Austral
Processing: Nicolas Outters

http://outters.fr/wp/vela1-hoo-rgb/

Somewhere in the image is this planetary nebula.

[starsurfer]

Sh2-278
https://www.hansonastronomy.com/sh2278
Copyright: Mark Hanson

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NGC 6559
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1320/
Copyright: ESO/U.G. Jørgensen

Click to view full size image

[starsurfer]

Sandqvist 114
http://www.astro-austral.cl/imagenes/ne ... 4/info.htm
Copyright: José Joaquin Perez

[Ann]

Sh2-278
https://www.hansonastronomy.com/sh2278
Copyright: Mark Hanson
SH2-278.jpg

I really like that picture. The two red emission fronts look like two human profiles, especially the left one. (Pareidolia. I know.) The "man" on the left appears to stare at the blue star immediately to the right of him, while the more misshapen (and nose-less) man on the right appears to blow blue cigarette smoke from a gaping mouth that might have made the shark of Jaws envious.

Fascinating!

Ann

[Ann]

NGC 5256
https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1720/
Copyright: NASA, ESA

Click to view full size image

This is a fascinating object indeed!

Click to view full size image

Perseus A. Credit:
Data - Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA; Processing - Al Kelly

NGC 5256 is slightly similar in appearance to Perseus A, the great radio galaxy in the Perseus cluster. We see similar long red tendrils glowing in hydrogen alpha in NGC 5256 as we do in Perseus A, even though they seem to be even brighter and bolder in NGC 5256, and we see strands of blue. The main body/ies of the galaxy/ies is/are yellow.

The big difference between NGC 5256 and Perseus A is that NGC 5256 is made up of two distinct galaxies, while in Perseus A the merging is an almost completely done deal. It would appear, too, that NGC 5256 is made up of two relatively equal-sized galaxies, while Perseus A is likely the product of a smallish spiral crashing into a giant elliptical (just like Centaurus A).

Fascinating!

Ann

[starsurfer]

Rho Ophiuchi Nebula (IC 4604)
http://www.astroimager.net/Page-FSQ-CCD-419.html
Copyright: Jim Janusz

[bystander]

Awesome Gravity
ESA Hubble Picture of the Week | 2018 Sep 10

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA -- Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

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Gravity is so much a part of our daily lives that it is all too easy to forget its awesome power — but on a galactic scale, its power becomes both strikingly clear and visually stunning.

This image was taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and shows an object named SDSS J1138+2754. It acts as a gravitational lens illustrates the true strength of gravity: A large mass — a galaxy cluster in this case — is creating such a strong gravitational field that it is bending the very fabric of its surroundings. This causes the billion-year-old light from galaxies sitting behind it to travel along distorted, curved paths, transforming the familiar shapes of spirals and ellipticals (visible in other parts of the image) into long, smudged arcs and scattered dashes.

Some distant galaxies even appear multiple times in this image. Since galaxies are wide objects, light from one side of the galaxy passes through the gravitational lens differently than light from the other side. When the galaxies’ light reaches Earth it can appear reflected, as seen with the galaxy on the lower left part of the lens, or distorted, as seen with the galaxy to the upper right.

This data were taken as part of a research project on star formation in the distant Universe, building on Hubble’s extensive legacy of deep-field images. Hubble observed 73 gravitationally-lensed galaxies for this project.

[starsurfer]

YM 16
http://www.capella-observatory.com/Imag ... s/YM16.htm
Copyright: Stefan Binnewies, Josef Pöpsel and Frank Sackenheim

[Ann]

Awesome Gravity
ESA Hubble Picture of the Week | 2018 Sep 10

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA -- Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

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Gravity is so much a part of our daily lives that it is all too easy to forget its awesome power — but on a galactic scale, its power becomes both strikingly clear and visually stunning.

This image was taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and shows an object named SDSS J1138+2754. It acts as a gravitational lens illustrates the true strength of gravity: A large mass — a galaxy cluster in this case — is creating such a strong gravitational field that it is bending the very fabric of its surroundings. This causes the billion-year-old light from galaxies sitting behind it to travel along distorted, curved paths, transforming the familiar shapes of spirals and ellipticals (visible in other parts of the image) into long, smudged arcs and scattered dashes.

Some distant galaxies even appear multiple times in this image. Since galaxies are wide objects, light from one side of the galaxy passes through the gravitational lens differently than light from the other side. When the galaxies’ light reaches Earth it can appear reflected, as seen with the galaxy on the lower left part of the lens, or distorted, as seen with the galaxy to the upper right.

This data were taken as part of a research project on star formation in the distant Universe, building on Hubble’s extensive legacy of deep-field images. Hubble observed 73 gravitationally-lensed galaxies for this project.

That's a fantastic field of galaxies!

The elongated, relatively broad, "beak-pointing-left" blue object immediately above the dominant elliptical galaxy of this field, reminds me of the "Penguin and Egg" galaxy pair. But the "Penguin" galaxy has been truly distorted by interactions with the "Egg", whereas in the case of the broad blue arc in the picture above, it is just the image of the galaxy that has been distorted. This, of course, is due to the bending of spacetime caused by the presence of a particularly massive elliptical galaxy along our line of sight, between ourselves and the distant blue galaxy.

Ann

[starsurfer]

Ear Nebula
https://www.astrobin.com/315776/C/
Copyright: Sascha Schüller

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We 1-10
http://www.pbase.com/dsantiago/image/167755604/
Copyright: Derek Santiago

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MWP 1 and Alv 1
https://www.astrobin.com/254988/
Copyright: Seiji Nakagawa

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NGC 4071
http://www.chart32.de/index.php/component/k2/item/133
Copyright: CHART32
Processing: Volker Wendel

[starsurfer]

Fg 1
https://astrodonimaging.com/gallery/fle ... ry-nebula/
Copyright: Don Goldman

[bystander]

An Explosive Phoenix
ESO Picture of the Week | 2018 Sep 17

Credit: ESO

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This image shows a dwarf galaxy in the southern constellation of Phoenix named, for obvious reasons, the Phoenix Dwarf.

The Phoenix Dwarf is unique in that it cannot be classified according to the usual scheme for dwarf galaxies; while its shape would label it as a spheroidal dwarf galaxy — which do not contain enough gas to form new stars — studies have shown the galaxy to have an associated cloud of gas nearby, hinting at recent star formation, and a population of young stars.

The gas cloud does not lie within the galaxy itself, but is still gravitationally bound to it — meaning that it will eventually fall back into the galaxy over time. Since the cloud is close by, it’s likely that the process that flung it outwards it is still ongoing. After studying the shape of the gas cloud, astronomers suspect the most likely cause of the ejection to be supernova explosions within the galaxy.

[bystander]

Knots and Bursts
ESA Hubble Picture of the Week | 2018 Sep 17

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

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In the northern constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice's Hair) lies the impressive Coma Cluster — a structure of over a thousand galaxies bound together by gravity. Many of these galaxies are elliptical types, as is the brighter of the two galaxies dominating this image: NGC 4860 (centre). However, the outskirts of the cluster also host younger spiral galaxies that proudly display their swirling arms. Again, this image shows a wonderful example of such a galaxy in the shape of the beautiful NGC 4858, which can be seen to the left of its bright neighbour and which stands out on account of its unusual, tangled, fiery appearance.

NGC 4858 is special. Rather than being a simple spiral, it is something called a “galaxy aggregate”, which is, just as the name suggests, a central galaxy surrounded by a handful of luminous knots of material that seem to stem from it, extending and tearing away and adding to or altering its overall structure. It is also experiencing an extremely high rate of star formation, possibly triggered by an earlier interaction with another galaxy. As we see it, NGC 4858 is forming stars so frantically that it will use up all of its gas long before it reaches the end of its life. The colour of its bright knots indicates that they are formed of hydrogen, which glows in various shades of bright red as it is energised by the many young, hot stars lurking within.

This scene was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), a powerful camera designed to explore the evolution of stars and galaxies in the early Universe.

[HenryStein]

Wow! That "Explosive Phoenix" definitely looks amazing!

[starsurfer]

NGC 6702-3
http://www.astrophoton.com/NGC6702.htm
Copyright: Bernhard Hubl

Click to view full size image