Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Virgo (Vir)  ·  Contains:  NGC 5560  ·  NGC 5566  ·  NGC 5569
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Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo, Niall MacNeill
Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo, Niall MacNeill

Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo, Niall MacNeill
Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo, Niall MacNeill

Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo

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Description

Inspired by Kevin Morefield's image of this group of three galaxies in Virgo, I started accumulating data for this target in early March. It only gets to a maximum altitude of about 53 degrees here and, given the inclement weather, it has taken me until now to complete the data acquisition and processing. 
These three galaxies are spirals but they are very different aspects and morphologies. The group, known as Arp 286, from Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, are believe to be at the same distance of between 67 and 79 million light years, and supposedly interacting. The largest is NGC 5566 and it is apparently 150 million light years across so approximately 40% larger than the Milky Way. It has a most interesting structure with a strong ring from which two thin spiral arms are radiating and they themselves practically encircle this most beautiful galaxy. This gives rise to its morphological classification of SAB(r)ab. This galaxy shows signs of distortion, although not as much as the edge on galaxy NGC 5560, to the lower left in the image, from which a wide star stream can be seen being pulled in towards NGC 5566. The star stream is better seen in Version D, where the inversion of the Lightness image makes the stars stream more readily visible. NGC 5569 at lower right in the image, almost seems like bystander with little sign of interaction and I wonder if is really further off and not interacting with the other two. It is a beautiful blue spiral with a small central bar. Pleasingly I was able to pick up a small amount of Ha in this galaxy and that has come through in the image. Most images don't pick this up, but it was definitely there.
I used the Continuum Mapping process for the integration of the Ha. There seems to be quite a strong Ha signal at the centre of NGC 5566 and I had to use a mask to subdue its contribution there, lest the centre appear too red. On my first processing, the small bright centre of the galaxy was completely saturated. I went back and used a small mask to protect it during the stretching processes for both RGB and Luminance and I am pleased that I was able to retain the structure, where a very bright round centre is surrounded by less bright elliptical zone. There are some knots of Ha emission close to the ring and extending along the spiral arms for a short way. 
NGC 5560, meanwhile has a rich yellow core with dust lanes and some strong Ha emission areas. The galaxy is warped into a shallow 'S' shape as it arches in towards NGC 5566, with which I presume it will eventually collide.
I hope you agree that this is a most splendid trio of galaxies, that I hope I have done justice to in this rendering.
I have shown the wider field image as the mouse over (Version F). At upper right in this image is the face on spiral galaxy PGC 51269, which is 487 million light years away.
The fact I chose a zoomed in version to show the 3 galaxies close up, meant that the noise apparent in NGC 5566 was somewhat obtrusive and detracted from the image, especially on further magnification. I split the image into its RGB components and discovered that the Green image was relatively noise free, but the Red and Blue images were much noisier, with the Blue being by far the worst. I applied TGV Denoise to the Red & Blue images, using a stronger denoise settings for the latter. This allowed me to remove much of the noise with the least effect on sharpness. The combined RGB image is much smoother.
Brice Blanc gave me feedback that the background was too dark and on reflection he was right. I generally aim for an ADU of ~ 5000 for the background, but this had ended up lower. I used Curve Transformation to life the brightness but avoiding over saturating the galaxy core.

Comments

Revisions

  • Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo, Niall MacNeill
    Original
  • Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo, Niall MacNeill
    C
  • Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo, Niall MacNeill
    D
  • Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo, Niall MacNeill
    E
  • Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo, Niall MacNeill
    F
  • Final
    Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo, Niall MacNeill
    G
  • Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo, Niall MacNeill
    H

C

Description: Wide field version

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D

Description: Inverted image to show star streams

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E

Description: After application of PixInsight TGV Denoise to improve noisiness of the image when zoomed in

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F

Description: Wide field image after the application of PixInsight TGV Denoise to improve noisiness under high magnification

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G

Description: Background brightness lifted per Brice Blanc's observation. Merci Brice

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H

Description: Background brightness lifted per Brice Blanc's observation. Merci Brice

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Arp 286, NGC 5566, NGC 5560 & NGC 5569 - A beautiful triplet in Virgo, Niall MacNeill