Hamburger with relativistic jet and spiral meat pattie
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.
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.
Nice image. Not being picky, but can I ask about the double diffraction spikes on the bright star just to the left of NGC5128? There are double vertical spikes the but the others are all singular. I ocassionally see this in my own images but have no idea why it appears. Is it a collimation issue, or related to primary edge diffraction, or ??
The small round cloud directly below the middle of the hamburger layer is interesting. I also see it in my full spectrum images and initially assumed it was something on my camera sensor. Good to see it is a natural object.
Well done. I certainly lack the patience, and systems, for that sort of data accumulation.
Beautiful image MnT. The write up was great and yup, trolling around was interesting. Love the blue on the upper and lower edges of the dust band.
Glen, that star with the double spikes is two stars. There are more doubles out than are healthy for you so it comes up a lot. Peek in and you can see the horizontal elongation caused by the 2 stars being close together. The focus here is spot on and the spikes are uber fine which is pretty darned good.
Nice Mike and Trish. You also have vague hints of the blue star arch which is on the upper right of the image inside the halo. See Ken Crawford's image which shows the position very clear.
Great colour, smooth background and lovely detail. Nice!
We've seen some great megadata Hamburgers on here in the last couple of years and this one compares very well. Great work, M&T Lots of interesting details in the full res version.
Thanks to all of you one by one for your generous encouragement.
Paul, I had a look at Ken's photo and I can see that the blue ring is indeed a complete and perfect ellipse. Thanks for that. We're encouraged to try to get more RGB to see if we can pick it.
Thanks Fred. We've scraped up another 6 hours of RGB, yet to be processed. Perhaps we can go for sharper processing if it all hangs together.
Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
I was trying to pick the word that best describes this image, hmmm? ...so I will say "A mighty Centaurus A that"
Great to surf too
Mike
Thanks muchly, Mike. Apart from the jet, the bit we're most pleased with is the tiny background galaxies "with form" as the Bill might say. We need to sharpen up the contrast on the dust lanes next time round.
You have been busy. Excellent shot. Buttery smooth. 
...so I will say "A mighty Centaurus A that" 
