Eye of the needle

[Ken Crawford]

It has been almost 6 months since I have been able to put together an image. The Weather in Northern CA has been bad plus I became a grandpa 1 month ago!

This image is of a galaxy that is well known but I have never imaged it. I was pleased to find details embedded in the core area that remind me of the disk of M104.

http://www.imagingdeepsky.com/Galaxies/NGC4565/NGC4565.htm

Thanks for taking the time to look and I hope everyone is doing well.

Kindest Regards,

[astroron]

Very fine image Ken:thumbsup:
I am amazed at how far the north bulge? extends, that 13 mag star is buried in it. but in the eyepiece is quite seperate.
All is well here :thanx:
Cheers :thumbsup:

[Stevec35]

That's a beauty Ken. Surely one of the best NGC 4565 images ever.

Cheers

Steve

[TrevorW]

Nice one Ken, thanks for posting

[Octane]

Awesome!

Congrats on becoming a grandpa, too. :)

H

[astronobob]

Strike me blowin me crazy, That is a stupendous image to open : Luv it, back distant Gals there close, and low center maybe a satilite Gal ? Perspective thrives in this field. Top class processing quality also

:cool:

live long and prosper !

[silv]

hmmmmmmmm!!!!! stunningly beautiful! :)

[Martin Pugh]

Welcome back on the forum Ken, and a very nice image to boot.

cheers
Martin

[Lester]

Thanks for the outstanding view Ken.
ps, it is a top life being a grandpa. All the best.

[RobF]

Gobsmacking! Thanks for sharing, and congrats on the new life :)

[jjjnettie]

Holy cow!! That's a real beauty Ken.

[John Hothersall]

Love the detail in the dust lane and the well controlled core.

John.

[LucasB]

That image is what astrophotography is all about! That is superb and one of the all time greats!:thumbsup:
Lucas

[ChrisM]

Ken, that is a ripper image. Absolutely astounding!
Congratulations.

Chris

[Ken Crawford]

Thanks for the kind comments and warm welcome back! I hope you all have a great rest of the week!

Kindest Regards,

[SkyViking]

A superb image Ken, the detail is great and looking very natural. There is a lot going on in the dust lanes, it's a pleasure exploring an image like this. Best NGC4565 I ever saw for sure.

[iceman]

What a beautifully detailed image, Ken. Just stunning detail, almost prettier than M104 but not quite :)

This is now IOTW (http://www.iceinspace.com.au).

Congratulations on becoming a grandfather!

[alpal]

That's a great picture Ken.
I always enjoy your images.
Thanks for posting. ( and for all your helpful videos!)

[Ken Crawford]

Wow!! Thanks so much for the honor :thanx:, you have made my day!

I think becoming a grandfather made me develope a strange neurological disorder, I can't seem to stop smiling! :)

Kindest Regards,

[dvj]

Nice one Ken! Between you and Martin, I never get tired of the "classics".

j

[FlashDrive]

That's impressive ... very clear detail ... very nice indeed.
Well done Ken :)

Flash :hi:

[Suzy]

Wow that's such an awesome pic!!!!
I've shared it with my facebook astro buddies- hope you don't mind. :D

[madbadgalaxyman]

Ken,
your uncommonly fine image gives an excellent account of the morphology of the inner regions of this galaxy.

I absolutely agree about the similarity of the central region of this galaxy compared to M104, which has a gigantic bulge of old stars, compared to the small (and somewhat boxy) bulge component of NGC 4565. However, the planar disk component of these two galaxies may not be so different;
in both cases, one seems to be able to see all the way in to the very nuclear regions of the galaxy; so maybe these two galaxies actually have a dust ring rather than a filled-in disk of dust.
The "ring" of dust and the "seeing into the nuclear region" have been confirmed for the case of M104, but these qualities are also consistent with your optical-regime observations of N4565

cheers,
Robert

Madbadgalaxyman's question of the day:
What would NGC 4565 look like if it were seen face on?

Extinction by interstellar dust (within this galaxy) does not seem to be high, despite the evident Sb-Sc spiral galaxy morphology.
(In the case of M104, I and others have argued that it is actually an S0 galaxy with a dust ring. )

To me, in N4565, the small HII regions and the modest amounts of evident dust (despite the fact that this galaxy is foreshortened due to its orientation), provide evidence for a very modest rate of formation of (Massive & Luminous) OB stars in this galaxy. Small-bulged galaxies usually have a high star formation rate......but some don't have.

[madbadgalaxyman]

As mentioned in previous post, there seems to be a ring structure, seen nearly edge-on, in Ken's image.

I have just found an 8 micron image, which should mostly show the dust within this galaxy, and without most of the overlying clutter of population I material, and there is indeed a ring structure in this galaxy......

Here is the 8 micrometers image of this galaxy from the Spitzer Space Telescope:

116141

I think I can give myself a "pat on the back" for good spotting in the more cluttered and entropic image at visible wavelengths!

There have been a couple of studies of the Near-infrared morphology of this galaxy, if anyone is interested.

[Paul Haese]

Nice natural and slick processing Ken. There is a real sense of three dimension involved in this image. Lovely image.

[Suzy]

Robert I may be getting good at this stuff yet! :D
I studied that pic before you posted and I scratched my head over it saying to myself "hey... you look just like the structure of M104..." :confuse3:
Could the student be surpassing the teacher (you! :P ) ......:question:
:lol::lol::lol:nooooooo long ways to go! :P

Do so! You deserve it our Mr Galaxy Man! ;)

[Ken Crawford]

Very Cool! Thanks for pointing this out as it makes what I saw in the processing easier to understand! I have always looked at imaging processing like space exploration as if you dig deep enough you sometimes see things you have not seen as well before. The slight warp to the galaxy shows a past interaction and I did look for star streams in the data but could not find any.

Thanks again for posting the interesting data on this amazing galaxy.

[madbadgalaxyman]

Hello Ken,

The grainy old chemical-process images in the Carnegie Atlas of Galaxies were useful for a rough and ready analysis of three-dimensional structures found within galaxies, but high resolution amateur CCD imaging such as yours can definitely shed much more light on the details of the morphology. (not the least because of the much greater dynamic range)

I am glad you found the Spitzer 8 micron view to be interesting!

Here is an NIR view from 2MASS. This image is shortwards of 3 microns, so what is being detected in this image is nearly all stellar light rather than gas and dust. The narrowness of the dust lane in front of the bulge is very evident, as is an interesting central concentration of light (or circum-nuclear feature) that is nested within the larger bulge.
Both the narrow dust lane and the central morphological feature are evident in your image, but they are more obvious in this Low Extinction near-infrared regime:

116166

"Just for fun and profit", I also attach the Far Ultraviolet + Near Ultraviolet image from GALEX. This looks decidedly odd, but some of the asymmetry may be due to variations in the very strong extinction of ultraviolet light by dust.

116167

___________________________________ _
I will see if I can dig up some more enlightenment about this galaxy from a couple of recent infrared papers about it. I have got some hunches about N4565, but I think I really need to overlay some images at various wavelengths.
___________________________________ __

Note added in later edit:

And look how boxy the bulge is, especially in the near-infrared image......these "bulges" are sometimes not real bulges (that is, spheroids), but instead are actually bar structures that are seen edge-on. It may be that N4565 is much later in the Hubble Sequence then we think it is, as this may not be a real bulge, but instead a pseudo-bulge.

There are various gradations found in galaxies between a genuinely spheroidal bulge (which is oblate spheroidal in shape), and a bar, and a "weak bar" which is just a slightly elongated bulge ("hot dog bun" shaped).
Our own Milky Way has a bulge which is also a weak bar, so this is sometimes called a "Bulge/Bar", just to confuse things further.

Added in a Second edit:

Madbadgalaxyman's puzzlers of the day:
Could the boxy "apparent bulge" that we see in our two-dimensional (flat) images be simply a bar that is seen edge-on, and not a spheroidally-shaped bulge?
Could the very-compact spheroidal structure that is nested within this "pseudo-bulge" be the real bulge of this galaxy?
Are we actually looking at a galaxy with a very very small bulge?

[madbadgalaxyman]

Oh, and just one more thing, it seems that our ability to see into the very centre of NGC 4565 is not just an illusion. There is an extant Hubble Space Telescope image in the near-ultraviolet at 3300 Angstroms that clearly shows the Seyfert nucleus of this galaxy:
(or at least the immediate area of stars just adjoining the nucleus)

116173

We are often able to see in to the very centre of galaxies which are low in their dust content (e.g. type S0 galaxies, and ellipticals) but this is an edge-on non-dwarf spiral galaxy, so the dust ring hypothesis is strongly indicated in the case of N4565.

[madbadgalaxyman]

Good work, Suzy. You are looking at galaxies like a morphologist.

In other words, you are trying to work out what is actually out there, in three-dimensional real space.

In my highly eccentric opinion, this approach sure beats "Oohing and Aahing" at the prettiness of a galaxy, forever and ever, but then some people do say that extra-terrestrials like myself are lacking in emotion.

cheers,
Rob

[stevous67]

Outstanding image. One like Martin's in quality, and one for us to all aspire to.

Thank you for sharing - it's a high bar... :scared2:


Steve

[strongmanmike]

This is a great galaxy image Ken and we can always trust Mad Bad Robo to give some interesting commentary...particularly on galaxies :thumbsup:

Mike

[Ken Crawford]

Yes, and I enjoyed it! Great to hear from you Mike - hope you been getting some clear skies somewhere!

[E_ri_k]

Wow thats fantastic. Well done!