A flock of stars
esahubble_potw1336a September 9th, 2013
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgement: Luca Limatola
The glittering specks in this image, resembling a distant flock of flying birds, are the stars that make up the dwarf galaxy ESO 540-31. Captured in this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the dwarf galaxy lies just over 11 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Cetus (The Whale). The background of this image is full of many other galaxies, all located at vast distances from us. Dwarf galaxies are the among the smaller and dimmer members of the galactic family, typically only containing around a few hundred million stars. Although this sounds like a large number, it is small when compared to spiral galaxies like our Milky Way, which are made up of hundreds of billions of stars. A version of this image was entered into the Hubbles Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Luca Limatola.
Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA
Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1336a/
Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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Image Details
Position Details
Color Mapping
- ID
- potw1336a
- Subject Category
- C.5.2.2
- Subject Name
- DDO 6, ESO 540-31
- Credits
- ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgement: Luca Limatola
- Release Date
- 2013-09-09T10:00:00
- Lightyears
- Redshift
- Reference Url
- https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1336a/
- Type
- Observation
- Image Quality
- Distance Notes
- Facility
- Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
- Instrument
- ACS, ACS
- Color Assignment
- Orange, Cyan
- Band
- Optical, Infrared
- Bandpass
- B, I
- Central Wavelength
- 475, 814
- Start Time
- Integration Time
- Dataset ID
- Notes
- Coordinate Frame
- ICRS
- Equinox
- J2000
- Reference Value
- 12.454533883, -21.0153465036
- Reference Dimension
- 3927.0, 1900.0
- Reference Pixel
- 1963.0, 950.0
- Scale
- -1.39141963675e-05, 1.39141963675e-05
- Rotation
- 55.919999999999966
- Coordinate System Projection:
- TAN
- Quality
- Full
- FITS Header
- Notes
- Creator (Curator)
- ESA/Hubble
- URL
- http://www.spacetelescope.org/
- Name
- 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
- potw1336a
- Resource URL
- http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/original/potw1336a.tif
- Related Resources
- Metadata Date
- 2013-06-14T16:42:48+02:00
- Metadata Version
- 1.1
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
