Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Hydra (Hya)  ·  Contains:  HD118268  ·  HD118333  ·  HD118416  ·  HD118463  ·  M 83  ·  NGC 5236  ·  Southern Pinwheel Galaxy
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M83 With Tidal Stream, Kevin Morefield
Powered byPixInsight

M83 With Tidal Stream

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M83 With Tidal Stream, Kevin Morefield
Powered byPixInsight

M83 With Tidal Stream

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

M83 is one of the closest, brightest and, to my taste, most beautiful of the great galaxies. I really want to present this as a pretty picture but I also want to show the extended features I'm seeing in the data.  A prominent tidal stream has been shown here on AB before and we see it in this image in the upper right.  Stretching well beyond the "pretty" level shows many other areas of mostly blue star clouds that appear to be related to the galaxy.  I've included that more extreme stretch and highlighted those I see.  They would likely extend beyond my FOV here.  There are a couple of bright stars outside my FOV on the top that have some diffraction spikes leaking into the image.

The core is extremely bright - my linear Luminance master shows the core at about 52% saturation with peaks at 74%.  This is with 5 minute subs, F6.8 and the "normal" gain setting for the IMX455 based ATIK APX60.  This made stretching quite difficult.  Maybe the GHS experts could have gotten the image stretched in one go, but I think even with that tool multiple stretches were needed.  In the end I did a core only stretch and blended it into the primary galaxy stretch in PS using a mask.  The core is quite interesting in RGB only data.  It shows distinct blue, magenta and orange areas.  An APOD from 2019 describes the core as "bright at x-ray energies, showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation."  https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190629.html

I shot OIII and Ha as well.  I was interested to see if any structures showed up as better defined in OIII but was disappointed by that.  No relativistic jets here!  The Ha data is quite nice as this galaxy is obviously has extensive Hydrogen emission regions.  But it seemed that the LRGB captured the Ha clouds well and I thought that attempting to blend in Ha data here would be more trouble than it is worth.  Having OIII and Ha does allow me to do an HOO and that's always fun.  I've uploaded the HOO version created after removing continuum from the Ha and OIII masters.  There is very little OIII left after cleaning the Blue and Green out.  I see a faint blue arc where the strongest tidal tail is located.  There is some possibility that is an extremely faint remnant internal reflection.  I have seen this sort of structure in my flats and this is probably only an ADU or two.

Comments

Revisions

    M83 With Tidal Stream, Kevin Morefield
    Original
    M83 With Tidal Stream, Kevin Morefield
    F
    M83 With Tidal Stream, Kevin Morefield
    G
    M83 With Tidal Stream, Kevin Morefield
    I
    M83 With Tidal Stream, Kevin Morefield
    K
  • Final
    M83 With Tidal Stream, Kevin Morefield
    L

F

Title: Extended Features

Description: Stretching beyond the "pretty" levels makes it easier to see some of the extended star and dust clouds. A wider and deeper field my connect these to the main galaxy.

Uploaded: ...

G

Title: HOO

Description: HOO composed of Ha with Red Continuum removed and OIII with Blue/Green Continuum removed

Uploaded: ...

I

Title: Background Reversed

Uploaded: ...

K

Title: Zoom

Uploaded: ...

L

Description: Partial re-edit to fix background issues andreduce saturation.

Uploaded: ...

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

M83 With Tidal Stream, Kevin Morefield