This is the Bullet Cluster of Galaxies, which has been a dark matter hot topic for over a decade. As far as I know this is the first amateur image of it - but I'm happy to see others.
It is not an impressive image in terms of bright and swirly reds and blues - it is simply a color calibrated snapshot of a very distant and old encounter in the universe, presented directly from the captured data.
Although the scene is controversial, I think the basic information is accepted - which is that the image shows two clusters of galaxies at about 3.8 billion light years distance - and the small cluster on the right passed through the larger cluster on the left at very high speed about 150 million years ago.
Independent observations by Chandra in x-ray, along with gravitational lensing studies, provide insight into the separate modalities of interaction between the galaxies, the hot gas, and the dark matter. The interpretations have varied over the last 12 years - so there are plenty of articles and conflicting explanations to be found for those interested.
Regardless of the interpretation and implications - I think we are very fortunate as backyard astronomical imagers to be able to capture such a scene with modest equipment.
The field of view is very small at about 6 arc-minutes wide. Captured with EdgeHD11 on CGE-Pro with ASI-1600mm guided with OAG and MetaGuide.
As with most of my images it has almost no processing, and the colors come directly from measurements through the
Sloan i', r', g' filters calibrated with scores or hundreds of available field stars with APASS
Sloan magnitudes.
The field is cropped to match the famous image composites by Hubble and Chandra - available here:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/1e0657/1e0657_xray_opt.jpghttp://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/1e0657/more.html
Comments