Stephan’s Quintet of Galaxies: I was inspired to try this after watching the Sept 25th
Astro Imaging Channel show. All processing was done using PixInsight.
This image is composed of data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope. Since the JWST project is publicly funded the data is freely available. I downloaded 6 nircam infrared wavelength files and processed them into an RGB image - visible wavelengths - for human consumption. So this data comes from a telescope located 1.5 million km away and is looking back in time 13.4 billion light years - when the universe was still an infant. Below is a link with a brief description and an image processed by professionals.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/52210580092/in/album-72177720300469752/Image Description: A group of five galaxies that appear close to each other in the sky: two in the middle, one toward the top, one to the upper left, and one toward the bottom. Four of the five appear to be touching. One is somewhat separated. In the image, the galaxies are large relative to the hundreds of much smaller (more distant) galaxies in the background. All five galaxies have bright white cores. Each has a slightly different size, shape, structure, and coloring. Scattered across the image, in front of the galaxies are number of foreground stars with diffraction spikes: bright white points, each with eight bright lines radiating out from the center.
Comments