Starship Asterisk*

In the Arms of NGC 1097

Explanation: Spiral galaxy NGC 1097 shines in southern skies, about 45 million light-years away in the chemical constellation Fornax. Its blue spiral arms are mottled with pinkish star forming regions in this colorful galaxy portrait. They seem to have wrapped around a small companion galaxy below and left of center, about 40,000 light-years from the spiral's luminous core. That's not NGC 1097's only peculiar feature, though. The very deep exposure hints of faint, mysterious jets, most easily seen to extend well beyond the bluish arms toward the left. In fact, four faint jets are ultimately recognized in optical images of NGC 1097. The jets trace an X centered on the galaxy's nucleus, but probably don't originate there. Instead, they could be fossil star streams, trails left over from the capture and disruption of a much smaller galaxy in the large spiral's ancient past. A Seyfert galaxy, NGC 1097's nucleus also harbors a supermassive black hole.

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Very nice picture! i saw it in the Latest Sky Photography forum the other day and instantly liked it. Look at that jet!

Ann

This is one of the best barred spiral galaxies in the sky and the fact it is also slightly peculiar is the proverbial icing on the cake!

I've always thought of the "jets" as tidal streams, I think it is possible that they might be the result of multiple minor mergers involving the cannibalisation of more than one dwarf galaxy. I wonder if this is part of the sample for David Martinez-Delgado's tidal stream survey?

I think the companion galaxy NGC 1097A is a shell elliptical and this image shows its shells the most clearly, unsurprising considering this is probably the longest exposure image of this galaxy with an exposure time of 90 hours!!!

Also considering this galaxy exhibits lots of star formation, it is odd that nearly every amateur image is only LRGB and doesn't include any Ha exposures.

Finally, the only aspect of this image that I don't like is that it has been mirrored and so doesn't match true sky orientation but this is a very minor complaint for a majorly impressive southern galaxy!

Next on Starlight Theater..."It Hungers".....

What an awesome sight....is the core like object in the lower left the core of the smaller galaxy???

:---[===] *

I recognized this photo, because I saved it as one of my desktop backgrounds from APoD 2013.11.14.
But this one is a mirror image of that one. Which one is reversed (not that it really matters)?

Does anyone else see a woman's face, head band, two eyes, nose, laughing, open mouth, teeth and neck? Instead of Arms of NGC1097, it could very well be Head of NGC1097.

A whirling dervish one with the cosmos...

Flying Squirrel wrote:I recognized this photo, because I saved it as one of my desktop backgrounds from APoD 2013.11.14.
But this one is a mirror image of that one. Which one is reversed (not that it really matters)?

Today's is mirrored. There have been five NGC 1097 APODs and none of them have been repeats. This is a unique APOD image (descriptions were reused once) and so was the one from 2013 Nov 11.

Ann wrote:Very nice picture! i saw it in the Latest Sky Photography forum the other day and instantly liked it. Look at that jet!

Ann

M87 has a nice jet, but I am missing any jets in NGC 1097. Therefore I ask You for subsequent delivery. Naturally a blue one please!
.

Here's a pseudocolor green-light closeup of the northeast "dogleg" feature, from an old Cerro Tololo data set. They are kind of blue (we measured B-V=0.4). The concentration in the middle had us also thinking tidal tails, albeit viewed at a suspicious angle (especially to have four of them looking so straight and radial).

ThePiper wrote:

Ann wrote:Very nice picture! i saw it in the Latest Sky Photography forum the other day and instantly liked it. Look at that jet!

Ann

M87 has a nice jet, but I am missing any jets in NGC 1097. Therefore I ask You for subsequent delivery. Naturally a blue one please!
.

The jets are faint, and they don't look blue. They are faint, straight and gray-looking.

Look at the upper left corner of the image. Can you trace a diffuse, gray jet from the upper left corner down towards NGC 1097? The jet passes right through a small edge-on background galaxy.

The other jet appears to start from the broad spiral arm that emanates from the lower left edge of the elongated bar. It stars at about 9 o'clock and moves out and to the left until it ends at about 8.30.

In this picture, which unfortunately doesn't have the same orientation as today's APOD, you can see both jets quite clearly.

Ann

NGC 3314 wrote: ... especially to have four of them looking so straight and radial.

Ann wrote: They are faint, straight and gray-looking....
Ann

Thank you, NGC3314, thank you Ann! Astronomers do have high sensitive telescopic eyeballs; I don't.
I have a new 24'' Monitor but nevertheless: No jets, no traces, no doglegs...
However, thanks for the supplemental special pictures which uncover the amazing phantoms.
Is something for my insider collection.