NGC 1385

NGC1385 - HST - Potw2133a.jpg
Autor/Urheber: (Credit) ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, Lizenz: CC BY 4.0
In the Heart of the Furnace

This jewel-bright image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 1385, a spiral galaxy 68 million light-years away from Earth, which lies in the constellation Fornax. The image was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which is often referred to as Hubble’s workhorse camera, thanks to its reliability and versatility. It was installed in 2009 when astronauts last visited Hubble, and 12 years later it remains remarkably productive.

NGC 1385’s home — the Fornax constellation — is not named after an animal or an ancient God, as are many of the other constellations. Fornax is simply the Latin word for a furnace. The constellation was named Fornax by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille, a French astronomer who was born in 1713. Lacaiile named 14 of the 88 constellations that are still recognised today. He seems to have had a penchant for naming constellations after scientific instruments, including Atlia (the air pump), Norma (the ruler, or set square) and Telescopium (the telescope).

Credit:

ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

Coordinates
Position (RA):  	3 37 28.33
Position (Dec): 	-24° 30' 3.22"
Field of view:  	2.68 x 2.24 arcminutes
Orientation:    	North is 99.9° left of vertical

Colours & filters Band	Wavelength	Telescope
Ultraviolet UV  	275 nm   	Hubble Space Telescope WFC3
Optical U       	336 nm   	Hubble Space Telescope WFC3
Optical B       	438 nm   	Hubble Space Telescope WFC3
Optical V       	555 nm   	Hubble Space Telescope WFC3
Optical I       	814 nm   	Hubble Space Telescope WFC3

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Same galaxy, different filters (potw2346a).jpg
(c) ESA/Hubble, CC BY 4.0
This luminous tangle of stars and dust is the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1385, that lies about 30 million light-years from Earth. The same galaxy was the subject of another Hubble Picture of the Week, but the two images are notably different. This more recent image has far more pinkish-red and umber shades, whereas the former image was dominated by cool blues. This chromatic variation is not just a creative choice, but also a technical one, made in order to represent the different number and type of filters used to collect the data that were used to make the respective images.It is understandable to be a bit confused as to how the same galaxy, imaged twice by the same telescope, could be represented so differently in two different images. The reason is that — like all powerful telescopes used by professional astronomers for scientific research — Hubble is equipped with a range of filters. These highly specialised components have little similarity to filters used on social media: those software-powered filters are added after the image has been taken, and cause information to be lost from the image as certain colours are exaggerated or reduced for aesthetic effect. In contrast, telescope filters are pieces of physical hardware that only allow very specific wavelengths of light to enter the telescope as the data are being collected. This does cause light to be lost, but means that astronomers can probe extremely specific parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is very useful for a number of reasons; for example, physical processes within certain elements emit light at very specific wavelengths, and filters can be optimised to these wavelengths.Take a look at this week's image and the earlier image of NGC 1385. What are the differences? Can you see the extra detail (due to extra filters being used) in this week’s image?[Image Description: A spiral galaxy. It has several arms that are mixed together and an overall oval shape. The centre of the galaxy glows brightly. There are bright pink patches and filaments of dark red dust spread across the centre.]

NGC 1385 (weic2403g).jpg
(c) NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Lee (STScI), T. Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team, CC BY 4.0
This spiral galaxy was observed as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program, a large project that includes observations from several space- and ground-based telescopes of many galaxies to help researchers study all phases of the star formation cycle, from the formation of stars within dusty gas clouds to the energy released in the process that creates the intricate structures revealed by Webb’s new images.NGC 1385 is 30 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax.Learn more about what can be seen in this vast collection of Webb images here.[Image description: Webb’s image of NGC 1385 shows a messy face-on spiral galaxy with filamentary structures in shades of white, yellow, orange, and red. At the centre are some light blue regions.]