NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 - Courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope (Dean Jacobsen)

NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 - Courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope

This Hubble Telescope image from 2004 shows a spectacular collision between two galaxies – NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 - and has created a spectacular starburst phenomenon.

This color image was created from monochrome data from the Hubble’s ACS and WFC camera packages and from four filters – the 814w filter [~700 nanometers to ~1000 nanometers] which is deep red and into the infrared range, the 658n narrowband filter which captures nitrogen II and hydrogen alpha emissions, the 550m filter [a medium band filter which captures light in the 500nm to 600nm wavelength range], and the 435w filter [ ~375nm to ~450nm]. The 814w filter and the 658n filter data were combined in Pixinsight using the PixelMath “max” function. The combined 814w/658n image, the 550m filtered image and the 435w filtered image were color mapped to red, green and blue respectively to create a color image.

The original data that I used can be found at the Hubble Legacy Archive. Just search for NGC 4038. The four filtered channels were collected in 2004 with the “ACS/WFC” instrument package so you can find the data that way.

Initial processing for the color image was done in PixInsight. Final color adjustments were done with Photoshop.

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Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4844429
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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