NGC1097 - ESO VLT - Ann22015a
The image consists of a ring of bright pink and blue dusty material. The ring has bright spots, showing where stars are forming. There are darker patches in the ring, where the dust is too dense for light to pass through. In the middle of the ring, there is a bright pink-yellow glow, with a very bright centre. There is a gap between this glow in the middle and the ring, where the background dark Universe peers through.
ERIS, the Very Large Telescope’s newest infrared eye on the sky, captured this stunning image of the inner ring of the galaxy NGC 1097. This galaxy is located 45 million light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Fornax. ERIS has captured the gaseous and dusty ring that lies at the very centre of the galaxy. The bright spots in the ring are stellar nurseries, shown in unprecedented detail. The centre of this galaxy is active, with a supermassive black hole that feeds off its surroundings.
This image has been taken through four different filters by ERIS’s state-of-the-art infrared imager, the Near Infrared Camera System — or NIX. The filters have been represented here by blue, green, red and magenta, where the last one highlights the compact regions in the ring. To put NIX’s resolution in perspective, this image shows, in detail, a portion of the sky less than 0.03% the size of the full Moon.
Credit:
ESO/ERIS team
Coordinates Position (RA): 2 46 19.04 Position (Dec): -30° 16' 29.13" Field of view: 0.55 x 0.52 arcminutes Orientation: North is 0.4° left of vertical Colours & filters Band Telescope Infrared J 1.28 μm Very Large Telescope ERIS Infrared H2 2.068 μm Very Large Telescope ERIS Infrared Ks 2.18 μm Very Large Telescope ERIS Infrared Br-g 2.172 μm Very Large Telescope ERIS.
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NGC 1097NGC 1097 = Arp 77 ist eine Balken-Spiralgalaxie mit aktivem Galaxienkern vom Hubble-Typ SBb im Sternbild Fornax am Südsternhimmel. Im Zentrum befindet sich ein auffälliger, rund 5500 Lichtjahre großer Ring mit starker Sternbildung. Dieser Bereich ist aktuell Ziel mehrerer Forschungsprojekte unter anderem bei der ESO. Es gibt deutliche Hinweise auf ein Schwarzes Loch mit etwa 100 Millionen Sonnenmassen im Kern der Galaxie. .. weiterlesen