A spiral galaxy crowned by a star

Esahubble_potw1330a_1024

esahubble_potw1330a July 29th, 2013

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASAAcknowledgement: Gilles Chapdelaine

Another treasure unearthed from the Hubble archives, this beautiful image shows a spiral galaxy named NGC 4517. Slightly bigger than our Milky Way, it is seen edge-on, crowned by a very bright star. The star is actually much closer to us than the galaxy, explaining why it appears to be so big and bright in the picture. NGC 4517 is located approximately 40 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin). It has a bright centre, but this is not visible in this Hubble image. Its orientation has led to it being included in many studies of globular clusters, clumps of stars that orbit the centres of galaxies like satellites. The galaxy was discovered in 1784 by William Herschel, who described this region as having a pretty bright star situated exactly north of the centre of an extended milky ray. Of course the milky ray seen by Herschel is actually this spiral galaxy, but with his 17th century observing gear he could only tell that there a fuzzy, blurry structure below the much brighter star. This image is composed from visible and infrared light gathered by NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. A version of this image was entered into the Hubbles Hidden treasures image processing competition by contestant Gilles Chapdelaine.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1330a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
ngc 4517
Subject - Local Universe
Galaxy > Type > Spiral
Esahubble_potw1330a_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 12h 32m 50.3s
DEC = 0° 7’ 4.5”
Orientation
North is 19.6° CW
Field of View
3.4 x 3.2 arcminutes
Constellation
Virgo

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Cyan Hubble (ACS) Optical (B) 606.0 nm
Orange Hubble (ACS) Infrared (I) 814.0 nm
Spectrum_base
Cyan
Orange
Esahubble_potw1330a_1280
×
ID
potw1330a
Subject Category
C.5.1.1  
Subject Name
ngc 4517
Credits
ESA/Hubble & NASAAcknowledgement: Gilles Chapdelaine
Release Date
2013-07-29T10:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1330a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
from NED
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
ACS, ACS
Color Assignment
Cyan, Orange
Band
Optical, Infrared
Bandpass
B, I
Central Wavelength
606, 814
Start Time
Integration Time
450, 1017, 678
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
188.209498866, 0.11793003022
Reference Dimension
4050.0, 3828.0
Reference Pixel
2025.0, 1914.0
Scale
-1.38983031849e-05, 1.38983031849e-05
Rotation
-19.640000000000018
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
potw1330a
Metadata Date
2013-04-23T10:16:57+02:00
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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