APOD: NGC 1566: The Spanish Dancer Spiral... (2019 Jul 02)

[APOD Robot]

NGC 1566: The Spanish Dancer Spiral Galaxy

Explanation: If not perfect, then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe containing billions of stars and situated about 40 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Dolphinfish (Dorado), NGC 1566 presents a gorgeous face-on view. Classified as a grand design spiral, NGC 1566's shows two prominent and graceful spiral arms that are traced by bright blue star clusters and dark cosmic dust lanes. Numerous Hubble Space Telescope images of NGC 1566 have been taken to study star formation, supernovas, and the spiral's unusually active center. Some of these images, stored online in the Hubble Legacy Archive, were freely downloaded, combined, and digitally processed by an industrious amateur to create the featured image. NGC 1566's flaring center makes the spiral one of the closest and brightest Seyfert galaxies, likely housing a central supermassive black hole wreaking havoc on surrounding stars and gas.

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[Boomer12k]

Should have a great view of BIG nebula there....


:---[===] *

[Ann]

Wow, what a stunning image! Thank you, NASA, ESA, Hubble and Leo Shatz!

And what a beauty this galaxy is, not least in the wonderful image that is today's APOD! Catriona Gray of the Philippines is Miss Universe for 2019, but I think that NGC 1566 is a strong contender for Miss Galaxy of the Nearby Universe!

Spacetelescope wrote:

NGC 1566 is an intermediate spiral galaxy, meaning that while it does not have a well defined bar-shaped region of stars at its centre — like barred spirals — it is not quite an unbarred spiral either (heic9902o).

Click to view full size image

NASA, ESA, Hubble and Leo Shatz

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Yes, NGC 1566 is certainly "a lot less barred" than NGC 1300!

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Flocculent galaxy NGC 2841. Hubble/Wikisky.

But there are some similarities between NGC 1566 and NGC 1300. They are both "grand design galaxies", which means that they have two long spiral arms. The opposite of grand design spirals (disregarding ellipticals and irregular galaxies) are flocculent spirals, such as NGC 2841 at left.

To return to NGC 1566 and NGC 1300, they both have small spirals in their cores, and presumably huge supermassive black holes in there. The black hole of NGC 1300 may have a mass of ~70 million solar masses, but I have found no info on the mass of the black hole of NGC 1566. (But according to this not so helpful list, NGC 1566 is listed among galaxies that have the most massive black holes. Please note that the galaxies are listed according to their catalogues, and then for each catalogue, the list starts with the galaxy with the lowest catalogue number. You have to scroll down to the NGC entries to find NGC 1566.)

Click to view full size image

Anyway, three quarks for Muster Mark, and hooray for the galactic beauty queen, NGC 1566!

Ann

[DL MARTIN]

Until we can collapse the 40 million year time disparity between what we perceive and the state of NGC 1566, similar to Shrodinger's Cat, how do we know this galaxy exists?

[Ann]

Until we can collapse the 40 million year time disparity between what we perceive and the state of NGC 1566, similar to Shrodinger's Cat, how do we know this galaxy exists?

Click to view full size image

Source: http://drivingtheuniverse.com/blog/matrix-dream/

Well, you have probably never met a lot of the people who are members of Starship Asterisk*. How do you know that we exist?

Come to think of it, are you absolutely sure that the world that you can see around you exists at all? Maybe it's all a dream?

I'm joking. But a lot of people have observed NGC 1566 with their own eyes, and many people have photographed it. That's enough for me to accept that NGC 1566 does exist.

Perhaps you mean that NGC 1566 may have been destroyed in the 40 million years it took for its light to reach us? The way I understand it - and my own understanding is all I can refer to, sorry - galaxies aren't destroyed unless they undergo a violent merger. There is apparently a pair of interacting galaxies, NGC 1553 and NGC 1549, which are located moderately close to NGC 1566, but not close enough to affect NGC 1566 much at all in 40 million years.

Ann

[orin stepanek]

Pretty Spiral; Shame I would have to stretch it to use as a wallpaper!

[sillyworm 2]

Gorgeous Galaxy.Fireworks galore! Just look at that star forming activity.I am also curious as to what the Universe and all the wondrous objects out there look like now after millions and millions of years.I so wish we could just get a glimpse of our own home galaxy.Looking forward to all the knowledge yet to acquire.

[spinlock]

Actually, all colors are boosted by long exposure and digital processing. It's amazing to realize that even our own Milky Way galaxy is seen as colorless with our own eyes, except few nearby bright stars. It's very likely that if we could look at galaxy like NGC 1566 from within, it would look colorless exactly like our Milky Way.

[BDanielMayfield]

Until we can collapse the 40 million year time disparity between what we perceive and the state of NGC 1566, similar to Shrodinger's Cat, how do we know this galaxy exists?

On astronomical time scales 40 million years is fairly brief. For instance it is only about 1/6th of 1 solar orbit around the core of our galaxy. Sol is now on about its 20th orbit.

We can be confident that NGC 1566 will still exist in 40 million years because the laws of physics are universal and we know of nothing that could reasonably cause such a colossal structure to disappear in such a short time span. It might look a little different in 40 million years, but probably not by much.

Bruce

[MoreInput]

Wonderful galaxy! One of my new favorites.

Mass of the central black hole according to this paper (2015, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.02664.pdf, page 13): "The mean BH mass is (5.3 ± 2.9) × 10^6" sun masses. So it is a lighter than NGC 1300's BH. Milky way has 4,1 x 10^6 sun masses.
(Edit: Wrong comparison)