Planetary nebulae in NGC 1399

Eso_eso9405a_1024

eso_eso9405a April 15th, 1994

Credit: ESO

This photo shows some of the very faint planetary nebulae in the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1399,
recently observed by an international team of astronomers with the ESO 3.5-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT). Their magnitudes are around 27 and they are indicated with circles. The central part of
the galaxy is "overexposed'' on this picture, in order to better bring out point-like images of the
planetary nebulae. The observers were Magda Arnaboldi and Ken Freeman from the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia. They obtained the spectra and measured the velocities of 37 planetary nebulae in this galaxy that is located at the centre of the southern Fornax cluster of galaxies, at a distance of about 50 million light-years. The total mass of the galaxy can be inferred from the measured motions and was found to be about ten times larger than the combined mass of the stars and nebulae seen in this galaxy. This indicates the presence of a very substantial amount of dark, "invisible'' matter in NGC 1399. The ESO Multi-Mode Instrument (EMMI) was used in RILD mode with MOS masks, the No. 5 grism and the Loral FA 2048 CCD, giving a dispersion of 1.7 per pixel. The 500.7 nm spectral line of [O III] was isolated with an interference filter with central wavelength 505 nm and of intermediate width (FWHM = 50 nm) in front of the grism. This reduced the wavelength range of each spectrum and increased the number of slitlets in each MOS mask. The total integration time for each field was 5 hours, split into shorter exposures. The achieved accuracy of the measured radial velocities is about 70 km/s, which is much smaller than the velocity dispersion of the galaxy. This CCD picture was obtained by Robin Ciardullo (Pennsylvania State University, U.S.A.) through a narrow-band [O III] filter with the 4-metre reflector at the Cerro-Tololo Interamerican Observatory in
Chile, and kindly made available to the Australian observers for identification purposes during the above mentioned observations at the ESO NTT. The scale is 1 arcmin = 3.4 cm; the field measures 6.8 x 7.9 arcmin. North is up and East is to the right.

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso9405a/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
NGC 1399
Subject - Local Universe
Nebula > Type > Planetary
Galaxy > Type > Elliptical

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Pseudocolor NTT (EMMI) Optical (V) 505.0 nm
Spectrum_base
Pseudocolor
Eso_eso9405a_1280
×
ID
eso9405a
Subject Category
C.4.1.3   C.5.1.4  
Subject Name
NGC 1399
Credits
ESO
Release Date
1994-04-15T00:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso9405a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Distance in light years from NED
Facility
New Technology Telescope
Instrument
EMMI
Color Assignment
Pseudocolor
Band
Optical
Bandpass
V
Central Wavelength
505
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
Equinox
Reference Value
Reference Dimension
3294.0, 3855.0
Reference Pixel
Scale
Rotation
Coordinate System Projection:
Quality
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
European Southern Observatory
URL
http://www.eso.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
European Southern Observatory
Publisher ID
eso
Resource ID
eso9405a
Metadata Date
2023-10-11T09:27:21.378035
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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