M82 a star burst galaxy
May 7, 2021 18:39:29 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
The other night I took some images of M82 (Also known as the Cigar Galaxy). The first image used 4 stacks of images taken with 4 different color filters. This included a Luminance, Green, Blue and a Hydrogen Alpha (HA) narrow band filter used for the Red channel. The second image had an added stack taken with a standard Red filter (this was added to the data from the HA filter to form the new red channel). As you can see the second images came out a very red (Probably since this galaxy is much brighter in the Infra-red than it is in visible light, more of which was caught with the red filter). The reason for using the HA filter was to bring out the filaments of ionized hydrogen exploding out from the center of this galaxy which glow with the Hydrogen Alpha line (656.28 nano meters, very red). M82 is known as a star burst galaxy since it is forming stars at a very rapid rate and has also had many large stars go supernova over the past few million years (about 1 every 10 years), These supernova explosions are what is driving the hydrogen gas filaments out from the center of M82. M82 is far smaller than the Milky Way (~30 billion stars) vs (~400 billion stars in the < Milky Way), but it is ~5 times brighter due to the rapid star formation. This increased rate star formation is thought to have been trigger when M82 had a close encounter with M81 (A much larger galaxy) ~100 million years ago. M82 is located in the the constellation Ursa Major and is ~12 million light years away. Note: there are a number of other small dim galaxies also visible in the image that appear as elongated blobs of light when viewed in ddl.
One of the Luminance images I took had a strange streak go though it. The streak got brighter then dimmer in what had to be a short amount of time since it was fully captured in the single frame taken with a 4096mm focal length. At first I thought this was a very short meteor streak, but on closer inspection it can be seen to periodically change brightness in a very regular way. This almost looked like what you would see from blinking running lights on a plane, but a plane would not just appear and disappear in so short a time. I guess it could have been a satellite that was rotating but typically satellites don't dim and brighten is this short a distance either. Since the image was taken at ~11:30pm a satellite would have to have been very high up to be out of the earths shadow at that point. So WTH is it. In any case the third image contains the frame that caught the strange object (the lucky 13th frame of the 25 luminance frames I took). The 4th image is a closer view of the WTH object. Any ideas would be appreciated.
All questions, comments and suggestions are welcome.
One of the Luminance images I took had a strange streak go though it. The streak got brighter then dimmer in what had to be a short amount of time since it was fully captured in the single frame taken with a 4096mm focal length. At first I thought this was a very short meteor streak, but on closer inspection it can be seen to periodically change brightness in a very regular way. This almost looked like what you would see from blinking running lights on a plane, but a plane would not just appear and disappear in so short a time. I guess it could have been a satellite that was rotating but typically satellites don't dim and brighten is this short a distance either. Since the image was taken at ~11:30pm a satellite would have to have been very high up to be out of the earths shadow at that point. So WTH is it. In any case the third image contains the frame that caught the strange object (the lucky 13th frame of the 25 luminance frames I took). The 4th image is a closer view of the WTH object. Any ideas would be appreciated.
All questions, comments and suggestions are welcome.
LRGB images using HA for the red channel (this image was stretched slightly more than the next image)
(Download)
LRGB images using a Red filter with HA added in for the red channel
(Download)
Lucky image 13 that caught the WTH is it intruder.
(Download)
Closer up image of the WTH is it intruder. (note: the distance between brightening doesn't vary)
(Download)
May 7, 2021 18:56:31 #
May 7, 2021 18:57:10 #
The "intruder" was a meteor. I have a similar image I figured was a tumbling meteor over a small lake in central Florida during the '80's.
May 7, 2021 19:00:33 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
ORpilot wrote:
nice and interesting, Klingon war ship?
Hi ORpilot
Thanks for checking out the images and for the comment. Maybe the ship has just fired a burst of photon torpedoes.
May 7, 2021 19:12:07 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
ELNikkor wrote:
The "intruder" was a meteor. I have a similar image I figured was a tumbling meteor over a small lake in central Florida during the '80's.
Hi ELNikkor
Thanks for viewing the images and for the comment. I suspect it is possible that it was a tumbling meteor, however I would have expected it to slow down as it entered the atmosphere causing the length between brightened to get longer (which could also be used to determine the direction of travel), however the distance between brightening points appears to be the same (I had measured it looking for a change in velocity thinking it could be a short test firing of a pulse detonation engine, but I couldn't detect any length change between bighting even when very enlarged on the screen).
May 7, 2021 19:21:00 #
May 7, 2021 19:25:29 #
Ballard
Loc: Grass Valley, California
Longshadow wrote:
Cool!
Hi Longshadow
Thanks for checking out the images of M82 and for the comment.
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