NGC 1300!
Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.
Quick Stats
Name: NGC 1300
Nickname: N/A
Distance: 61-71 million light-years
Constellation: Eridanus (Southern Celestial Hemisphere)
NGC 1300 is a stunning barred spiral galaxy located about 61 to 71 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. Eridanus is a constellation located in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. NGC 1300 is a part of a larger group of galaxies known as the Eridanus Cluster. This cluster is host to about 200 galaxies!
NGC 1300 is a fairly large galaxy, but our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is about twice its size. NGC 1300 is around 100,000 to 110,000 light-years across while our own galaxy is about twice that long. It also shares another similarity with our own galaxy- the barred center of the galaxy. It is thought that our own galaxy also has a barred core. This is found in about half of all spiral galaxies with a potential for about two-thirds of all galaxies to have barred cores.
The barred center is made up of a block of stars, which are usually older stars. These stars are formed when gas from the spiral arms is channeled inward towards the core. The inward-spiraling gas might potentially be fuel for a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The word potentially is key, however. There has not been evidence of activity in the black hole at the center of this galaxy. The black hole is there, it is just not actively gobbling up matter.
NGC 1300 has a stunning core which has a grand design spiral structure, which is just a fancy way of saying that the spiral is very well-defined and organized. This structure is about 3,000 to 3,300 light-years across and is a spiral-within-a-spiral. The core itself draws matter into it most likely due to that supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. This causes another spiral structure to form in addition to the massive spiral structure of the entire galaxy itself, which causes this spiral-in-a-spiral. The structure of the core can be seen in the image below.
The core of NGC 1300 showing the spiral-in-a-spiral structure.
Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.
NGC 1300 was a bit tricky for me to figure out how to process when I was still learning how to process images from Hubble. The NASA images that I looked at all had the galaxy as a blueish-white color. Whenever I tried to process it, it came out with a much more cerulean blue. I couldn’t figure out how to get it the color I wanted and it took a few tries before I was happy with the final image. This is the first first image shown at the top of the post!
Since then, I have learned many techniques that make processing these images much easier. One technique I learned was how to add a Hydrogen-Alpha layer to my image, if there was one available. In the image below, the Hydrogen-Alpha makes the nebulae of NGC 1300 pop out against the blue background of the dust and stars. These are areas of the galaxy where new stars are being created!
The red areas in NGC 1300 are nebulous areas mostly made of hydrogen gas. These are areas where new stars are being created!
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 over multiple days by the Hubble Space Telescope. Those days were September 21, 22, 23 and 26 of 2004. It was an image created using three greyscale images assigned to the RGB channels in Photoshop CC. The images used were:
RED: hst_mos_0017053_acs_wfc_f814w_sci
GREEN: hst_mos_0017053_acs_wfc_f555w_sci
BLUE: hst_mos_0017053_acs_wfc_f435w_sci
H-ALPHA LUM: hst_mos_0017053_acs_wfc_f658n_sci
Interested in learning how to process your own image? Check out the tutorial here!
To watch the work that goes into creating an image like this, check out this video here.
These images are associated with HST proposal 10342.
The first image was processed by myself, Alexandra Nachman, on 09/12/20 using data from the Hubble Legacy Archive. Image taken by NASA/ESA/Hubble Space Telescope. The second image was processed by myself, Alexandra Nachman, on 01/16/21 using data from the Hubble Legacy Archive. Image taken by NASA/ESA/Hubble Space Telescope.
REFERENCES- ALL INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE WAS TAKEN FROM THE SITES BELOW
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