Antilhue - Chile
Antilhue - Chile
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| Designation | NGC 4038 + NGC 4039, The Antennae, The Ringtail Galaxy |
| Object type | Colliding galaxy pair |
| Coordinates | 12 h 02 min -18° 30' (Corvus) |
| Description | A cosmic embrace 60 million light
years away. Shorter exposures show the brightest features of these
interacting galaxies as a mirrored question mark or a ringtail. Deeper
exposures, such as the one shown here, reveal two filaments about 8 resp.
12 arc minutes long that emit strongly in radio wavelengths and were
created by the tidal forces of the collision process. These forces also
trigger not only new star forming regions, but even a new galaxy: the
brighter bluish area near the end of the top (southern) arm is NGC 4038S,
a so-called TDG: Tidal Dwarf Galaxy.
Click on the image for higher resolution. The field of view is 25 x 37 arc minutes with north towards the lower left. Here is an earlier, narrower field image. |
| Exposure | NRGB 640:120:120:120 min @ -20°C - all unbinned, no filter on luminance |
| Camera | SBIG STL-11000 with Astronomik Type II RGB filter set, selfguided |
| Optics | RCOS 14.5" Ritchey-Chrétien @ f/9 |
| Mount | Astro-Physics AP1200GTO |
| Software | MaxIm DL/CCD, Sigma Pre Beta 11, Adobe Photoshop CS |
| Location - Date - Time | San Esteban (Chile) - 26Mar 06:00 UTC and 22, 23 resp. 24May2006 02:00 UTC |
| Conditions | Transparency 4-7/10, Seeing 5-7/10, Temperature +14°C, high cloud on 22.05 |
