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Arp 273 Interacting Galaxies, Jeff Coldrey

Arp 273 Interacting Galaxies

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Arp 273 Interacting Galaxies, Jeff Coldrey

Arp 273 Interacting Galaxies

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Description

Arp 273 is a pair of interacting galaxies, lying 300 million light years away in the constellation Andromeda. It was first described in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, compiled by Halton Arp in 1966. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, is about five times more massive than the smaller galaxy. It has a disc that is tidally distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. The smaller galaxy shows distinct signs of active star formation at its nucleus, and it is thought that the smaller galaxy has actually passed through the larger one. Wikipedia

Data for this image was acquired through the Hubble telescope in December 2010 using the Ultraviolet-Visible channel of WFC3 (Wide Field Camera 3).

http://www.stsci.edu/hst/wfc3/documents/handbooks/currentDHB/wfc3_dhb.pdf

The WFC3/UVIS instrument on the Hubble is quite peculiar, in that it comprises two imaging chips, separated by a distance of 30 pixels. As a result, the calibrated and distortion corrected stacks include a 30 pixel "dead-zone" through the middle of them with data missing. To compensate for this, the Hubble acquires a 2nd (slightly offset) image on the next day with the "dead zone" between chips in a slightly different position (see first 2 image revisions).

15 hours of data through the F600LP filter (599->996nm) was mapped to the Red channel.

18 hours via the F475X filter (378->650nm) was mapped to the Green and Blue channels.

UV data was quite weak and extremely noisy, so has been discarded.

To assemble complete images for each filter, a "mosaic scrapbook" approach was adopted using DynamicCrop, NewImage, PixelMath plus a few other processes to match gradients.

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Revisions

  • Arp 273 Interacting Galaxies, Jeff Coldrey
    Original
  • Arp 273 Interacting Galaxies, Jeff Coldrey
    B
  • Final
    Arp 273 Interacting Galaxies, Jeff Coldrey
    C

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Arp 273 Interacting Galaxies, Jeff Coldrey