The star city that never sleeps

Esahubble_potw1105a_1024

esahubble_potw1105a January 31st, 2011

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys has captured this moment in the ever-changing life of a spiral galaxy called IC 391. Although these massive star cities appear static and unchanging, their stellar inhabitants are constantly moving and evolving, with new stars being born and old stars reaching the ends of their lives often in spectacular fashion, with an immense supernova explosion that can be viewed from Earth. On 3 January 2001, members of the Beijing Astronomical Observatory discovered such an explosion within IC 391 and it was named SN 2001B. This was a Type Ib supernova, which occurs when a massive star runs out of fuel for nuclear fusion and collapses, emitting vast amounts of radiation and creating a powerful shock wave. Hubble has contributed much to our understanding of supernovae in recent years, and it has made an extensive study of supernova 1987A (heic0704), the brightest such stellar explosion to be seen from Earth in over 400 years. IC 391 lies about 80 million light-years away in the constellation of Camelopardalis (the Giraffe) in the far northern part of the sky. The British amateur observer William Denning discovered it in the late nineteenth century, and described it as faint, small and round. This picture was assembled from images taken with Hubbles Wide Field Channel on the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Images through a blue filter (F435W) were coloured blue, those through a green filter (F555W) are shown as green and those through a near-infrared filter (F814W) are shown in red. The exposure times were 800 s, 700 s and 700 s respectively and the field of view is 2.1 by 1.4 arcminutes.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1105a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
IC 391
Subject - Local Universe
Galaxy > Type > Spiral
Esahubble_potw1105a_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 4h 57m 21.5s
DEC = 78° 11’ 24.5”
Orientation
North is 0.8° CCW
Field of View
2.1 x 1.4 arcminutes
Constellation
Camelopardalis

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Red Hubble (ACS) Infrared (I) 814.0 nm
Green Hubble (ACS) Optical (V) 555.0 nm
Blue Hubble (ACS) Optical (B) 435.0 nm
Spectrum_base
Red
Green
Blue
Esahubble_potw1105a_1280
×
ID
potw1105a
Subject Category
C.5.1.1  
Subject Name
IC 391
Credits
ESA/Hubble & NASA
Release Date
2011-01-31T10:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1105a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
ACS, ACS, ACS
Color Assignment
Red, Green, Blue
Band
Infrared, Optical, Optical
Bandpass
I, V, B
Central Wavelength
814, 555, 435
Start Time
Integration Time
700, 700, 800
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
74.339629825, 78.1901448987
Reference Dimension
2489.0, 1724.0
Reference Pixel
1244.0, 862.0
Scale
-1.39393347219e-05, 1.39393347219e-05
Rotation
0.75999999999999945
Coordinate System Projection:
TAN
Quality
Full
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
potw1105a
Metadata Date
2011-01-07T12:52+01:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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