Friday had some moon but had good seeing and was clear all night. We added 9 hours of luminance, taken with the Aspen 16M, to last year's NGC 5128 (another 9 hrs L plus 7 hrs each RGB, taken with an ageing STL 11000M).
Because Friday's L was much better than last year's, we weighted the L 3:1 in favour of this year's.
ORIGINAL IMAGE (2MB) HERE.
NGC 5128 comprises two galaxies in spectacular collision.
The great bulk of NGC 5128 is a massive elliptical, filling the frame. A typical giant elliptical has formed from the merger of countless smaller galaxies, including spirals. Any spiral structure, and attendant gas and dust is lost during the merger. The result comprises mature, orange, Population II stars, and a super-massive central black hole.
The black hole in 5128 is very active, and producing a pair of bipolar relativisic jets. The upper jet is visible as two faint bluish stringy fragments, which are labelled with arrows in the thumbnail. Because the lower jet is facing away from us, it is much fainter and not visible in this image.
The second component, being engulfed by the hungry elliptical, is a large edge-on spiral, complete with thick but disrupted equatorial dust lanes.The collision has triggered a round of massive star formation, as indicated by bright blue stars along the upper right and lower left edges of the spiral.
Once the collision is complete, almost all of the gas and dust in the spiral will have been converted into stars, and the spiral structure will disappear entirely.
A troll around the
original image will show the jet fragments, fine dust lanes extending far from their home, and the burst of star formation triggered by the collision. Many distant galaxies are visible through the elliptical halo, which, typically, shows no clearly defined outer edge but just merges imperceptibly with the intergalactic medium.
All subs 1 hour. 20" PlaneWave on MI-750 fork.
Best,
Mike n Trish