Starbirth with a chance of winds?

Esahubble_potw1704a_1024

esahubble_potw1704a January 23rd, 2017

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

The lesser-known constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs), is home to a variety of deep-sky objects including this beautiful galaxy, known as NGC 4861. Astronomers are still debating on how to classify it: While its physical properties such as mass, size and rotational velocity indicate it to be a spiral galaxy, its appearance looks more like a comet with its dense, luminous head and dimmer tail trailing behind. Features more fitting with a dwarf irregular galaxy. Although small and messy, galaxies like NGC 4861 provide astronomers with interesting opportunities for study. Small galaxies have lower gravitational potentials, which simply means that it takes less energy to move stuff about inside them than it does in other galaxies. As a result, moving in, around, and through such a tiny galaxy is quite easy to do, making them far more likely to be suffused with streams and outflows of speedy charged particles known as galactic winds, which can flood such galaxies with little effort. These galactic winds can be powered by the ongoing process of star formation, which involves huge amounts of energy. New stars are springing into life within the bright, colourful head of NGC 4861 and ejecting streams of high-speed particles as they do so, which flood outwards to join the wider galactic wind. While NGC 4861 would be a perfect candidate to study such winds, recent studies did not find any galactic winds in it.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1704a/

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 4861
Subject - Distant Universe
Galaxy > Type > Irregular
Esahubble_potw1704a_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 12h 59m 2.8s
DEC = 34° 51’ 46.8”
Orientation
North is 80.3° CW
Field of View
3.2 x 2.6 arcminutes
Constellation
Canes Venatici

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Blue Hubble (ACS) Optical (V) 606.0 nm
Green Hubble (ACS) Optical (V) 606.0 nm
Green Hubble (ACS) Optical (I) 814.0 nm
Red Hubble (ACS) Optical (I) 814.0 nm
Red Hubble (WFC3) Optical (NII) 658.0 nm
Red Hubble (WFC3) Optical (SII) 673.0 nm
Spectrum_base
Blue
Green
Green
Red
Red
Red
Esahubble_potw1704a_1280
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ID
potw1704a
Subject Category
D.5.1.6  
Subject Name
NGC 4861
Credits
ESA/Hubble & NASA
Release Date
2017-01-23T06:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1704a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
ACS, ACS, ACS, ACS, WFC3, WFC3
Color Assignment
Blue, Green, Green, Red, Red, Red
Band
Optical, Optical, Optical, Optical, Optical, Optical
Bandpass
V, V, I, I, NII, SII
Central Wavelength
606, 606, 814, 814, 658, 673
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
194.761518513, 34.86300027
Reference Dimension
3885.0, 3107.0
Reference Pixel
1942.5, 1553.5
Scale
-1.38862788363e-05, 1.38862788363e-05
Rotation
-80.259999999999948
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
potw1704a
Metadata Date
2016-07-22T12:34:54+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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