Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The Whale galaxy

NGC 4631

The interaction with its smaller neighbor produced an intense burst of star formation. So many were created that lots of supernovae exploded near the center of the galaxy, pushing gas out of the galactic plane and creating an enormous corona of X-ray emitting gas (because it's so hot).



...And... the result of the last three clear nights in our foggy-cloudy Bonn:


Note: Due to the fact that I'm incredibly impatient to share a picture when I have a preliminary result (always far from what can be eventually achieved with the data), I won't wait for a couple of months until I get my hands on Photoshop and have a lot of time to properly process it. But one day, the Whale will become better!

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