An “Island Universe” in the Coma Cluster

By Ben on August 12, 2010 at 3:07 am | In Blog Posts | 3 Comments

Nice eye candy.
–Ben

An “Island Universe” in the Coma Cluster

A long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image shows a majestic face-on
spiral galaxy located deep within the Coma Cluster of galaxies, which lies
320 million light-years away in the northern constellation Coma Berenices.
The galaxy, known as NGC 4911, contains rich lanes of dust and gas near its
center. These are silhouetted against glowing newborn star clusters and
iridescent pink clouds of hydrogen, the existence of which indicates
ongoing star formation. Hubble has also captured the outer spiral arms of
NGC 4911, along with thousands of other galaxies of varying sizes. The high
resolution of Hubble’s cameras, paired with considerably long exposures,
made it possible to observe these faint details.

This natural-color Hubble image, which combines data obtained in 2006,
2007, and 2009 from the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced
Camera for Surveys, required 28 hours of exposure time.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/24/

3 Comments »

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  1. Be sure to check the list of name under “FastFacts”, About the Data, Data Description! :)

    Doug

    Comment by dougwelch — August 12, 2010 #

  2. Congrats.

    I assume you are ‘the’ D. Welch ???

    –Ben

    Comment by ben — August 12, 2010 #

  3. Yup!

    We had 180 orbits to determine a Cepheid distance to the Coma cluster. Unfortunately, the Advanced Camera for Surveys died in the middle of our observation interval.

    The Hubble Heritage team took our images and a couple of their own and combined them to produce the beautiful image in the link.

    Cheers,
    Doug

    Comment by dougwelch — August 12, 2010 #

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