ARP 273, the Rose Galaxy!
Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.
Quick Stats
Name: ARP 273
Nickname: Rose Galaxy
Distance: 300 million light-years
Constellation: Andromeda (Northern Celestial Hemisphere)
ARP 273 is a beautiful peculiar galaxy— a galaxy with no standard shape such as a spiral galaxy. But, there is definitely a spiral in this image— just a very warped spiral. This is because ARP 273 is a pair of interacting galaxies! Can you distinguish the two galaxies? This stunning interacting galaxy pair is located about 300 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. This makes it a Northern Celestial Hemisphere object.
The larger of the two galaxies is on the top of the image and makes up the “rose” portion of the galaxy pair. It is known as UGC 1810 and is about five times larger than its companion galaxy. This has allowed it to retain most of its spiral structure, though the arms have been stretched out due to tidal interactions with its smaller neighbor. The smaller galaxy, located on the bottom of the image, makes up the “stem” of the rose, and is known as UGC 1813. It is thought that UGC 1813 passed through UGC 1810 and warped the shape of the large spiral. The shape of the spiral arm is indicative of the smaller galaxy passing through the larger one, just off center.
When galaxies interact with each other, their interactions provide tremendous amounts of energy that rev up star formation in these galaxies. The blue coloring at the top of this image is indicative of star clusters of bright, young blue stars. These stars have been formed only in the past few million years and release a lot of energetic ultraviolet light. UGC 1813 is viewed nearly edge-on and shows star clusters close to its nucleus. Star formation for this smaller galaxy is thought to have started earlier than star formation in the larger galaxy, UGC 1810.
The Rose Galaxy was such a fun one to process! When I first downloaded it, it came out very yellow, and I was too inexperienced to be able to balance it to more of a white color. Once I gained the experience needed, I finally was able to process this stunning galaxy! It is definitely one of my favorites. The first image I processed is below. The image at the top of this article is my second process of the image.
ARP 273, the Rose Galaxy! This is my first process of the image.
Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.
Because Hubble is funded by the US government, the data is free to the public, since we pay for it! This image is such a stunning image and I want everyone to be able to download and use this data! Below are links to resources so you can process your own image! Questions? Email me at peculiargalexyastro@gmail.com or reach out to me here!
RESOURCES
This image was taken on December 17, 2010 by the Hubble Space Telescope. It was an image created using three greyscale images assigned to the RGB channels in Photoshop CC. The images used were:
RED: hst_mos_1014131_wfc3_uvis_f600lp_sci
GREEN: hst_mos_1014131_wfc3_uvis_f475x_sci
BLUE: hst_mos_1014131_wfc3_uvis_f390w_sci
Interested in learning how to process your own image? Check out the tutorial here!
These images are associated with HST proposal 12326.
REFERENCES- ALL INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE WAS TAKEN FROM THE SITES BELOW
Comentarios