Starship Asterisk*

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NASA/JPL/Cassini/CICLOPS: Cassini Spies the Ice-Giant Planet Uranus

NGC 1360
http://www.capella-observatory.com/Imag ... GC1360.htm
Copyright: Dietmar Böcker, Ernst von Voigt, Stefan Binnewies and Josef Pöpsel

Jökulsarlon Aurora
https://www.flickr.com/photos/astro-tanja/11312930186/
Copyright: Tanja Sund

IC 51
https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/9861534214/
Copyright: Hubble Legacy Archive/NASA/ESA
Processing: Judy Schmidt This very strange galaxy is also catalogued as Arp 230 and is similar to Centaurus A in that it appears to be a merger between an elliptical and a spiral galaxy and also exhibits outer tidal shells.

Adam Block has uploaded a new galaxy picture, NGC 4395.

NGC 4395 is a vigorously starforming galaxy with very large, bright blue clusters and associations. In spite of all the new stars, however, NGC 4395 doesn't have any very bright or very obvious emission nebulas, so my impression is that that the starburst here is coming to an end. The galaxy has a faint bulge and a tiny nucleus, suggesting that it used to be a small, faint and unremarkable galaxy before it turned on its present remarkable fireworks. In fact, according to this paper NGC 4395 doesn't even have a bulge! Nevertheless, the galaxy has a black hole at its center.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_4395 wrote:
The nucleus of NGC 4395 is active and the galaxy is classified as a Seyfert. It is notable for containing one of the smallest supermassive black hole with an accurately-determined mass.[3] The central black hole has a mass of "only" 300,000 sun masses,[4] which would make it a so-called "intermediate-mass black hole".

Ann

Otra mas.

Esta vez le toca a ARP 273

ARP 273 por astrocentejo, en Flickr

Ann wrote:Adam Block has uploaded a new galaxy picture, NGC 4395.

NGC 4395 is a vigorously starforming galaxy with very large, bright blue clusters and associations. In spite of all the new stars, however, NGC 4395 doesn't have any very bright or very obvious emission nebulas, so my impression is that that the starburst here is coming to an end. The galaxy has a faint bulge and a tiny nucleus, suggesting that it used to be a small, faint and unremarkable galaxy before it turned on its present remarkable fireworks. In fact, according to this paper NGC 4395 doesn't even have a bulge! Nevertheless, the galaxy has a black hole at its center.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_4395 wrote:
The nucleus of NGC 4395 is active and the galaxy is classified as a Seyfert. It is notable for containing one of the smallest supermassive black hole with an accurately-determined mass.[3] The central black hole has a mass of "only" 300,000 sun masses,[4] which would make it a so-called "intermediate-mass black hole".

Ann

I was quite surprised to see this imaged by Adam Block!! However, it has plenty of emission nebulae but are only visible with Ha exposures. See this paper for more info: http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/515/1/97/
Also I think Adam Block will have images of many interesting galaxies coming up soon! Can't wait!!!

IC 348 region
http://downthewormhole.blogspot.co.uk/2 ... e-tex.html
Copyright: John Davis IC 348 is the small blue nebula with an associated cluster near the left edge. The large pink nebula is Ced 18a and the dark nebula in front of it is B3. The medium sized blue reflection nebula near the right side is NGC 1333, the smaller yellow one at right edge is vdB12 and the smaller blue one below it is vdB13.

M63 Sunflower Galaxy
http://www.astrobin.com/94809/B/
Copyright: Andrea Pistocchini
Strange transit of ISS
http://www.astrobin.com/93227/
Copyright: Andrea Pistocchini

Comet C/2012 K1 Panstarrs
http://www.astrobin.com/94922/
Copyright: Andrea Pistocchini
http://cdn.astrobin.com/images/thumbs/3 ... ermark.jpg

bystander wrote:

ESA/HEIC: The scale of the Universe (NGC 4605)

Credit: NASA.ESA/Hubble

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I really want to see a HaLRGB composite image of this by an amateur astrophotographer, which would show an amazing ionized outflow structure similar to the one associated with M82.

NGC 1344
http://www.astrodonimaging.com/gallery/ ... ?imgID=268
Copyright: Don Goldman This is one of the first few shell elliptical galaxies to be identified more than 30 years ago.

starsurfer wrote:

bystander wrote:
ESA/HEIC: The scale of the Universe (NGC 4605)

I really want to see a HaLRGB composite image of this by an amateur astrophotographer, which would show an amazing ionized outflow structure similar to the one associated with M82.

geckzilla ??? Not an astrophotographer but she does wonders with Hubble data.

Unfortunately, there's no H-alpha data available in the Hubble archive for this. If there were, that HEIC image would already have it included. Our best bet is to have one of the astrophotographers image it.

Note the interesting distribution of stellar populations in NGC 4605. One third of the galaxy is mostly green, one third is blue, and one third is yellow. Also, the yellow and the blue parts of the galaxy have very similar surface brightnesses. You may not be able to tell the surface brightness distribution of a galaxy from a typical photo, since many astrophotographs are "tweaked" so that the brightest parts are "turned down" a bit, while fainter parts are amped up. (Amateurs are not always able to do this, and therefore they sometimes produce "truer" portraits of the surface brightness of galaxies. Check out this amateur photograph of M100, showing the galaxy's bright center and faint arms.) James D Wray, in his Color Atlas of Galaxies, never tried to change the surface brightness distribution of the galaxies he photographed, and some of his galaxy portraits look very different from what we are used to. But when he photographed NGC 4605, the galaxy looked almost equally bright "all over".

Ann

bystander wrote:

starsurfer wrote:

bystander wrote:
ESA/HEIC: The scale of the Universe (NGC 4605)

I really want to see a HaLRGB composite image of this by an amateur astrophotographer, which would show an amazing ionized outflow structure similar to the one associated with M82.

geckzilla ??? Not an astrophotographer but she does wonders with Hubble data.

Nah not geckzilla, someone like Ken Crawford or Adam Block!

NGC 1999
http://www.astrophoto.com/N1999LRGB.htm
Copyright: Tony Hallas

Sh2-284
http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im1177.html
Copyright: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage) and WIYN

Sh2-67
http://www.astrophoton.com/S067.htm
Copyright: Bernhard Hubl

Pinwheel Galaxy (M101)
http://www.karelteuwen.be/photo_page.ph ... 7&album=14
Copyright: Karel Teuwen

LDN 1251
http://www.starpointing.com/ccd/ldn1251.html
Copyright: Fabian Neyer

Image from 2007 but I do not remember seeing it before.

PIA08393: Rainbow on the Rings
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/pia08393