Saturnebula!

Just when I think the good images of galaxies are starting to dry up, this comes along. For those who aren't aware, the Hubble Space Telescope had been offline. After having been brought back online, this was one of the first images (within the first couple of days, at any rate) captured - a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies known as ARP 147. A spectacular pair of ring-shaped galaxies, one face on, one nearly perpendicular to our viewpoint. This is an APOD image, you can click through for more explanation and a higher resolution view, as always.

Friday Galactic Blogging

Triangulum, aka M33, is the second closest major galaxy - after the Andromeda Galaxy - at a mere three million light years. It's also generally considered the most distant object, though M81 (twkeve million light years away) has been observed by a few experienced observers, and of course there was an event earlier this year, which for a short time was a naked eye object at 7.5 billion light years. M33 is a good sized galaxy - third largest in the Local Group, which, of course, also include Andromeda and the Milky Way.

This is an APOD image. Click the picture to view the APOD page for it. Click the image on that page for a higher resolution view.

Friday Galactic Blogging

That's quite a bridge! 22,000 light years long and spanning the gap between the galaxies NGC 5216 and NGC 5218, known collectively as ARP 104. Obviously in close a gravitational relationship, these two galaxies look appear to be in the process of tearing each other up, probably to merge in the next hundred thousand years or so. They're relatively close to us at a distance of about seventeen million light years in the direction of the Big Dipper. It's an APOD image, and you know what to do.

Friday Galactic Blogging

Need visual proof of General Relativity? Today's your lucky day! The white smeary dot at the center of this image is a relatively normal seeming, distant, apparent elliptical. The partial ring surrounding it is another galaxy, lined up distantly behind the first, whose image has been lensed by the gravitation of the closer galaxy. Known as Einstein Rings such objects aren't necessarily galaxies. The phenomenon only occurs in instances where the two objects are nearly perfectly lined up. It's an APOD image and you know the drill.

Friday Galactic Blogging

This is one of the most memorable galactic images I've seen. Two vivid spirals, obviously interacting with each other, each in its own plane. What a beautiful sight. Collectively known as Arp 271, they comprise another selection in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. Also designated as NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 the pair is about ninety million light years away and spans about 130,000 light years. Click the image for the APOD page, click the image there for a closer view,

Friday Galactic Blogging

I make no apologies for finding pictures of spiral galaxies incredibly beautiful. The subject of this photo is NGC 7331, which at 40 million light years, is relatively nearby. Large spirals like this are often compared to the Milky Way, and this one particularly; but, with apparently at least three spiral arms (the Milky Way seems to have two) and lacking (at least to my eyes) a strong central bar, I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. Click the image for the APOD page, click through there for a high resolution version of the image.

Friday Galactic Blogging

This is a composite image of the galaxy known as M81, built from data in four bands, (quoting from the APOD page)

X-ray data (blue) from the Chandra Observatory, infrared data (pink) from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and an ultraviolet image (purple) from the GALEX satellite, with a visible light (green) Hubble image.

The inset is X-ray band data showing some detail on black holes in the central structure of the galax, located about 12 million light years away, which has been featured here before.

It is an APOD image and all the usual stuff applies.

Friday Galactic Blogging

Another beautiful example of the effect of close gravitational interactions and the seemingly infinite variations in galactic structure that can result. This is AM 0644-741 (the "AM" designation is new to me.) One of a class of "ring galaxies," it is officially a lenticular galaxy. It is about 300 million light away in the southern constellation Dorado. It's an APOD image, and, as always, clicking through is rewarded with additional information and higher resolution views.

Friday Galactic Blogging

Between the foreground dust clouds and diffuse gas (a bit of our own galaxy - an Integrated Flux Nebula - and the intergalactic background, this strikes me as a canonically beautiful image. The galaxies in the background compose the M81 group of galaxies. M81 (Messier 81) itself with M82 (Messier 82) are a gravitationally locked pair interacting visibly, as I've blogged in the past. This is an APOD image.

Click once for the APOD page, click through there to see the higher resolution image.

Friday Galactic Blogging

Viewed side-on a spiral galaxy can reveal an entirely different kind of view. This interesting, fat looking, edge-on spiral is NGC 3628, a member of the Leo Triplet - a small group, three galaxies, which also include the spirals M65 and M66. The long tidal tail, seems to evidence of gravitational interaction with the other members of the group. This APOD image links back to the APOD page for the image that, as always, links to a higher res version.

Friday Galactic Blogging

This nicely situated galactic collision is close enough and oriented such that we have an extremely good, detailed snapshot of the ongoing interaction between two apparently merging galaxies. One hundred million light years away, it's almost in our neighborhood (the furthest visible galaxies are thirteen billion light years distant), located in the Hydra-Centaurus supercluster, the nearest supercluster except for our own.

Friday Galactic Blogging

The object pictured in this dramatic non-APOD view of an ongoing galactic collision is known as Arp 148. "Arp" is the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. The object to the left is the smaller of two galaxies which is apparently just completing the process of passing through the center of the larger object, leaving a ring shaped galaxy in its wake. Spectacular!

H/T Bad Astronomy Blog. Clicking the image, will link you to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope page for this object, and higher resolution views are offered there.

Friday Galactic Blogging

This is a beautifully detailed image of the Sunflower Galaxy, aka Messier 63 and NGC 5055.

It's a spiral on the same scale (approximately one hundred million light years across) as the Milky Way, and its structure is so clearly seen that it was one of the first so-called "spiral nebulae" to recognized as such. The smaller image is an infrared view showing just how intricately the spiral structure of this object is revealed. Click the main image for the APOD page. Click through for the higher resolution view.

Friday Galactic Blogging

It looks like a Barred Spiral here. The Large Magellanic Cloud is classified an Irregular, but on longer exposures, such as this deep field exposure from APOD, its structure begins to seem a bit more ordered, as if it was once clearly a barred spiral, but its gravitational interaction with the Milky Way and the Small Magellanic Cloud has distorted that prior configuration.

Click through for the APOD page, click on the image there to see the Hi-res view.

Friday Galactic Blogging

NGC 2841. A close (50,000,000 light-years) obliquely oriented unbarred spiral, visible in Ursa Major. It's bigger than the Milky Way and only superficially similar. It is an APOD image and as such the same old stuff applies: click the image once to view the APOD information page. Click the image on that page for the higher resolution view.

Friday Galactic Blogging

There are very few individual stars in this image. In fact almost every object in the photograph is a galaxy, to closely paraphrase the APOD blurb. It's a picture of the Coma Cluster of Galaxies, a large, dense cluster of over one thousand galaxies, located about 320 million light years distant from us and found near the North Galactic Pole, which means that we would present as a face on spiral to an observer in any of the galaxies in this cluster.

Friday Galactic Blogging

The Mice. So called because of their long tails, the result of apparent ongoing collision between these two striking galaxies. According to APOD, they are "likely members of the Coma Cluster of Galaxies," and are about 300 million light years distant.

Friday Galactic Blogging

Miss me? Judging by the referring URLs, the galaxy images are the biggest draw to this blog, my sterling prose notwithstanding.

This is M104, one of the the most recognizable, and easily seen (apparent magnitude 9.0) galaxies available to us. Also known as the Sombrero Galaxy, for obvious reasons, it is yet another gorgeous spiral - its prominent dust lanes providing a unique appearance. As is always the case with APOD links on this blog clicking the image will take you to the APOD site. Clicking on the image there will open the ful resolution version.

Friday Galactic Blogging

Face on spirals - I never get sick of looking at them. This is another, very high resolution, view of M74, a relatively close-by galaxy at approximately 32 million light years, and approximately the same size as our own. It's a nearly perfect example of what's known as a Grand Design Spiral Galaxy. This is an APOD image and as such a higher resolution image is available if you click through.

Friday Galactic Blogging

I never cease to be awed by how unbelievably beautiful these deep space images can be. This tableau contains NGC 7331 in the upper right and something else called Stephan's Quintet a "compact group" and the site of a giant intergalactic shock wave (imaged beautifully on the Wikipedia page.) It's an APOD image and as always click through for a higher res image.