Cartwheel Galaxy (John Bozeman)

Cartwheel Galaxy

The Cartwheel Galaxy (also known as ESO 350-40 or PGC 2248) is a lenticular galaxy and ring galaxy about 500 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. It is a D25 isophotal diameter of 44.23 kiloparsecs (144,300 light-years), and has a mass of about 2.9–4.8 × 109 solar masses; its outer ring has a circular velocity of 217 km/s. An estimation of the galaxy's span resulted in a conclusion of 150,000 light years, which is slightly smaller than the Andromeda Galaxy. The galaxy was once a normal spiral galaxy before it apparently underwent a head-on “bullseye” style collision with a smaller companion approximately 200-300 million years prior to how we see the system today. When the nearby galaxy passed through the Cartwheel Galaxy, the force of the collision caused a powerful gravitational shock wave to expand through the galaxy, like a rock being tossed into a sandbed. Moving at high speed, the shock wave swept up and compressed gas and dust, creating a starburst around the galaxy's center portion that went unscathed as it expanded outwards. This explains the bluish ring around the center, brighter portion. It can be noted that the galaxy is beginning to retake the form of a normal spiral galaxy, with arms spreading out from a central core. These arms are often referred to as the cartwheel's “spokes”.

IR data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Color mapped:
Red - F444W
Green - F356W
Blue - F277W

Processed with FITS Liberator, PixInsight and Photoshop 2022.

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6087261
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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