#regions
Similar in size to large, bright spiral galaxies in our neighborhood, IC 342 is a mere 10 million light-years distant in the northern constellation of Camelopardalis. It would be a prominent galaxy in our night sky, but it is hidden from clear view and only glimpsed through the veil of stars, gas and dust clouds along the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. Even though IC 342’s light is dimmed and reddened by intervening cosmic clouds, this sharp telescopic image shows the galaxy’s dust, young star clusters, and glowing pink star forming regions along spiral arms that wind far from the galaxy’s core. IC 342 may have undergone a recent burst of star formation activity and is close enough to have gravitationally influenced the evolution of the local group of galaxies and the Milky Way.
Image Credit & Copyright: Daniel Feller
Spiral galaxy, NGC 3521 is about 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth’s sky, it is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other, more popular, spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It’s hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait, though. Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy has characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars. This image also shows the galaxy embedded in gigantic bubble-like shells. They are likely tidal debris, which are streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past.
Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates!
Image Credit & Copyright: Acquisition - Eric Benson, Processing - Dietmar Hager
in my mailbox yesterday: Vicenzaoro mag special issue delivered. Didier Falzone (who I thank a lot) as always is the AD behind this super funny and foodish assignment.
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