As always, there are many fine images here!
As a galaxy nerd, and a lover of blue stars and pink emission nebulae, and as someone who is particularly glad to see LRGB images or galaxies that are rarely photographed, my hands-down favorite here must be Robert Pölzl's image of NGC 3310.
NGC 3310 is such an unusual galaxy. It is like a mixture of a spiral and an irregular galaxy, both regular and highly disturbed. Its inner parts are also incredibly packed with hot massive stars. In "The Color Atlas of Galaxies", James D Wray wrote about NGC 3310:
"
This is the most ultaviolet galaxy in the atlas according to photo-electric measurements (see data above). It is also one of the highest surface brightness galaxies illustrated. This galaxy is effectively one single mass of star formation activity.
I have been fascinated by NGC 3310 ever since I read about it in "The Color Atlas of Galaxies". I was disappointed by the Hubble image of it, since the HST image isn't an RGB image, but instead a mapped color picture. That's why I'm incredibly happy every time anyone produces a good RGB image of NGC 3310.
Robert Pölzl's image emphasizes the pink emission nebulae in NGC 3310. Huge clusters of young blue stars are being "thrown out" from the galaxy in a manner reminiscent of one of the galaxies in Stephan's Quintet, which seems to "fire" blue clusters from its main body like missiles. Please note the large outer structures, which are neutral in color and clearly made up of intermediate to old stars. These intermediate to old stars form several shells around the main galaxy. To the lower left of the bright part of the galaxy are some very faint but huge curved tail-like structures.
To me, NGC 3310 looks like a post-collision galaxy. We see no signs of the hapless interloper, but NGC 3310 itself is reacting violently, with both a raging burst of star formation in its inner parts and strong signs of disturbances in its outer envelope. So all in all, thank you so much for photographing this fantastic galaxy, Robert!
Another great image of a galaxy full of blue stars and pink emission nebulae is Ryan Hannahoe and Robert Gendler's portrait of the Small Magellanic Cloud. I love seeing so many pink emission nebulae in this nearby dwarf galaxy being brought out so clearly. Do follow the link provided by Robert to see more highly resolved versions of this image, and don't miss the annotated version!
Among my other favorites in this thread, I must mention Leonardo Orazi's NGC 1342 & VdB18. I find Leonardo's colors absolutely delightful as usual. It is a joy to watch his star-peppered nebula-scapes!
Speaking of colors, I find Alistair Symon's Cone Nebula, Christmas Tree Cluster and IC447 image delightful, too. And how can I, the lover of blue things, resist Floyd W.
Blue's portrait of the mostly blue star formation region NGC1333 in LRGB?
Speaking of blue things, Jerry Lodriguss certainly does the Pleiades full justice! I was glad to see small orange-colored stars peak out among the "sea of blue".
Bob Franke is a man I admire for some superior galaxy images he has produced, and I certainly like seeing his portrait of a blue reflection nebula and the stars that made it, called vdB31 and friends!
And of course, as a Swede, how can I resist Mikael Woxberg's The Milky Way over northern Sweden? Good to see you here, Mikael!
I was glad to see Travis A Rector's color image of SN 2011fe. I'm surprised that there haven't been more images of this important relatively nearby supernova.
An image which is barely blue at all, but which is truly fascinating, is Lorenzo Comolli's Vulture Head nebula. To me the nebula doesn't look like a nebula, but like the tremendous snout of a fearsome celestial giganto-pig. Or else it looks like a huge
moose.
Another picture that I paid special attention to is Efrain Morales' picture of Mars. What I find so interesting about it is that Mars is gibbous, and Chris just pointed out in another thread here that Mars can indeed be gibbous!
There are many "Earth and sky" images here, and I like them all. The one that fascinates me the most is Dani Caxete's Night at the olive grove. The large shiny dark olives all show vaguely spiral-shaped blue reflections, which somehow resemble blue spiral galaxies. It is as if oval-shaped patches of pitch black sky centered on spiral galaxies had been cut out from the universe and pasted into the image. Amazing.
Thanks to everyone who posted images here!
Ann
