What a sparkler of a galaxy, can't believe it is named the Southern Pinwheel. It should be called the Southern Fireworks as far as I am concerned with all the Ha within it. When I gave the Ha frame an STF, it thought I may have accidentally stretched the L.
One thing that was driving me nuts was the haze in the upper right. I thought I must have done my flats wrong, and even sorting through some of the top images of AB either were too zoomed in for it- or not deep enough. I tried searching things like M83 IFN and M83 tidal streams on google scholar, but also no dice. Was about to give up when I found Gabriel Santos' image. Not only did it show the same feature, but it also contained a huge amount of research he had done on it since it was also puzzling him! Make sure you go give his image description a read
https://www.astrobin.com/416784/?nc=Thrilled to find out the structure is indeed quite real. Overall, very happy with how this image came out. Between the sharpness, the depth, and the amount of Ha, this galaxy is a real winner.
Comments