Colliding Galaxies - NGC 3314 , Hubble Space Telescope, Rudy Pohl

Colliding Galaxies - NGC 3314 , Hubble Space Telescope

Acquisition type: Electronically-Assisted Astronomy (EAA, e.g. based on a live video feed)
Colliding Galaxies - NGC 3314 , Hubble Space Telescope, Rudy Pohl

Colliding Galaxies - NGC 3314 , Hubble Space Telescope

Acquisition type: Electronically-Assisted Astronomy (EAA, e.g. based on a live video feed)

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Description

Data acquisition: Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA

Data processing: Rudy Pohl

RGB image

NGC 3314 is actually two large spiral galaxies which just happen to almost exactly line up. The foreground spiral is viewed nearly face-on, its pinwheel shape defined by young bright star clusters. But against the glow of the background galaxy, dark swirling lanes of interstellar dust appear to dominate the face-on spiral's structure. The dust lanes are surprisingly pervasive, and this remarkable pair of overlapping galaxies is one of a small number of systems in which absorption of light from beyond a galaxy's own stars can be used to directly explore its distribution of dust.

NGC 3314 is about 140 million light-years (background galaxy) and 117 million light-years (foreground galaxy) away in the multi-headed constellation Hydra. The background galaxy would span nearly 70,000 light-years at its estimated distance. A synthetic third channel was created to construct this dramatic new composite of the overlapping galaxies from two color image data in the Hubble Legacy Archive.

(Information from NASA's Astronomy Photo of the Day from July 15, 2011)

Comments

Revisions

  • Colliding Galaxies - NGC 3314 , Hubble Space Telescope, Rudy Pohl
    Original
  • Colliding Galaxies - NGC 3314 , Hubble Space Telescope, Rudy Pohl
    B
  • Final
    Colliding Galaxies - NGC 3314 , Hubble Space Telescope, Rudy Pohl
    C

Histogram

Colliding Galaxies - NGC 3314 , Hubble Space Telescope, Rudy Pohl