Astronomy Picture of the Day -- M83: The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy [A.K.A. the Tidy Bowl galaxy]

NASA ^ | October 08, 2015 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, The Southern Pinwheel. But reddish star forming regions that dot the sweeping arms highlighted in this sparkling color composite also suggest another nickname, The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy Centaurus A. In fact, the core of M83 itself is bright at x-ray energies, showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. This sharp composite color image also features spiky foreground Milky Way stars and distant background galaxies. The image data was taken from the Subaru Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's Wide Field Imager camera, and the Hubble Legacy Archive.

[SunkenCiv]

[Image Credit: Subaru Telescope (NAOJ), Hubble Space Telescope, European Southern Observatory; Processing & Copyright: Robert Gendler]

[SunkenCiv]

The Big One

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[null and void]

Shouldn’t the Subaru telescope be focused on the Pleiades? </inside joke>

[PreciousLiberty]

This is a public service announcement based on the fact that many of these images (including this one) are not “true color” in the sense that you would see this if you looked through a very high powered telescope with your eye, or were somehow able to travel nearby and view it first hand. This galaxy would tend towards the blue end of the spectrum.

It’s actually silly to call it the “thousand ruby galaxy”.

[PreciousLiberty]

Here's how it looks imaged in visible light:

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Damned. That’s a picture of my ulcer. I’d know it anywhere.

[metmom]

Stunning!!!!

Thanks for posting.