C1ay Posted October 31, 2008 Report Posted October 31, 2008 NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business. Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147. The image demonstrated that the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, thereby scoring a "perfect 10" both for performance and beauty. The two galaxies happen to be oriented so that they appear to mark the number 10. The left-most galaxy, or the "one" in this image, is relatively undisturbed apart from a smooth ring of starlight. It appears nearly on edge to our line of sight. The right- most galaxy, resembling a "zero," exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation. The blue ring was most probably formed after the galaxy on the left passed through the galaxy on the right. Just as a pebble thrown into a pond creates an outwardly moving circular wave, a propagating ring of higher density was generated at the point of impact. As this excess density collided with outer material that was moving inward due to the gravitational pull of the two galaxies, shocks and dense gas were produced, stimulating star formation. The dusty reddish knot at the lower left of the blue ring probably marks the location of the original nucleus of the galaxy that was hit. Arp 147 appears in the Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, compiled by Halton Arp in the 1960s and published in 1966. This picture was assembled from WFPC2 images taken with three separate filters. The blue, visible-light, and infrared filters are represented by the colors blue, green, and red, respectively. The galaxy pair was photographed on October 27-28, 2008. Arp 147 lies in the constellation Cetus, and it is more than 400 million light-years away from Earth. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) and is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Md. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations. The institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., Washington, D.C. STScI is an International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA 2009) program partner. Source: NASA Quote
pamela Posted October 31, 2008 Report Posted October 31, 2008 I love this picture. I stared at it for a long time last evening and thought how fortunate we are to have this technology. There is so much beauty out there waiting to be discovered. Knowledge would seem so cold, without the wonder that it brings. Quote
Pyrotex Posted October 31, 2008 Report Posted October 31, 2008 I'm with you, pamela. This picture is awesome. Can you imagine being a member of a civilization living around a star on the "ring" galaxy on the left? The views they must have in their night skies! Wow! Quote
Southtown Posted November 2, 2008 Report Posted November 2, 2008 Eh... eye of the beholder, I guess. Quote
freeztar Posted November 2, 2008 Report Posted November 2, 2008 It's absolutely amazing. Beautiful even! I was just sitting here contemplating a light year and trying to imagine 400 of them. :hihi: Quote
Hill Posted November 3, 2008 Report Posted November 3, 2008 If you want to see where it is in the skies, you can find it in Google Sky here: Google Earth Community: Hubble is back in business-with a perfect 10 Quote
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