Starship Asterisk*

Great image today! Is there any way I can download it *without* the magnified inset? Thanks! http://www.cosmotography.com/images/gabany_cropped_ngc4449.jpg Hello Joe_L: Thanks for asking! Here is a link that will enable you to download a large copy of the image without the insert. http://www.cosmot...

Manuel Jimenez, you manage to give your portrait of NGC 7331 an amazing depth by bringing out the interstellar flux nebula (as I think that the faintg nebulosity that is spread over much of the image is called). When you talk about "tidal", do you mean what looks like a faint tidal stream...

M1- The Crab Nebula
http://www.cosmotography.com/images/small_new_m1.html
Copyright: R. Jay GaBany
[attachment=0]m1.jpg[/attachment]
http://www.cosmotography.com/images/close_new_m1.jpg

IC 434 & NGC2023- The Horsehead nebula http://www.cosmotography.com/images/small_new_ic434.html Copyright: R. Jay GaBany [attachment=0]horsehead.jpg[/attachment] http://www.cosmotography.com/images/lrg_new_ic434.jpg NGC 891 http://www.cosmotography.com/images/small_ngc891_2010.html Copyright: R...

Hi Orin: Thanks for the compliment! I appreciate it! As it happens, I use this picture for my wallpaper, too. Art, I also thought of that flick when I was working on this project. It's funny, how things get stuck in your head and won't let go. The picture you posted is a classic. A good caption woul...

Thank you very much Ann and atalas! I really appreciate the compliments and the congratulations!

NGC 4631- The Whale Galaxy
http://www.cosmotography.com/images/small_ngc4631.html
Copyright: R. Jay GaBany

The red spiral arms (said to contain stellar nurseries) seem to be evenly spaced. There are three and they seem roughly 1/3rd of a circle apart. Is this so? I meant three main red arms. I know it's not a perfectly neat picture, but the trend seems clear enough. And besides whether it's true for M10...

atalas wrote:

jgabany wrote:NGC 891
http://www.cosmotography.com/images/sma ... _2010.html
R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com)

Spectacular work Jay!

Thank you!!!

NGC 891
http://www.cosmotography.com/images/sma ... _2010.html
R. Jay GaBany (Cosmotography.com)

I can make out all the shades in your monitor calibration page so I assume it is either the colour defintion of my monitor or my eyes (or both!) that makes Arp's Loop fairly hard to discern. I can however a bit more readily discern what seems to be Arp's Loop if I invert the colours. Hi David: Plea...

Hello DavidLeodis:

The picture has a fairly wide range of contrast, so you may simply need to adjust your monitor's contrast control. My web site has a gray scale image that will help you accomplish this task- it will only take a few seconds:

http://www.cosmotography.com/images/calibrate.html

Hello César:

Thank you for the congratulations! I very much appreciate it and will pass your congrats to the other members of the team!

Hello keerthi2kiran: The thin vertical lines you have noticed to the right of the picture's center is dust from Arp's loop, back lit by the far more distant galaxy. This portion of the loop becomes visually washed out as it passes in front of the bright spiral star system so all we can see are areas...

Hello:

You have sharp eyes! The on-line presentation image was flipped for aesthetic reasons.

Hi, everything's relative. For example, if you consider that the estimated size of the Universe is approximately 150 thousand million light years in diameter (and growing larger at an increasing rate with each passing second), then I believe many would understand why 15 million light years (or .0001...

Hello Starnut: I apologize that my response implied there were no stars in the streams surrounding NGC 5907- I used a poor choice of words. You are correct, the streams are embedded with stars but they are widely dispersed with other material. In fact, the team failed to find any concentrations of s...

Hello danbonnick: These are good questions- thank you for asking! The streams seen in this picture represent the remains of a long lost satellite galaxy that was gravitationally torn to shreds and digested by the large spiral, seen edge on in this image. Very little of the former companion remains. ...

I see lots of images in full color but wonder what the 'true' colors of the objects might be? I.e. what would they look like to me say if I were visiting them? Hello Idecola: This is a great question! The human eye's retina contains two types of photoreceptors called rods and cones. There are about...

It is my understanding that due to the long exposure times required, b&w imaging provides the best contrast and relative exposure values. See an explanation of the process: http://www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/glossary/lrgb.html Hello bystander: When you gaze towards a clear moonless night sky, the...

Jay, How long does it take to "Scrub" an image like this? What about the Trifid APOD image from 07-07-07 Any Scrubbing time estimates? Hi BMAONE23: Removing unwanted foreground stars and background galaxies from an astronomical photograph can be very challenging when they appear superimpo...

Hello BMAONE23: I have viewed the image that you referenced in your post and did a little bit of digging so that I could respond correctly. In the case of NGC 5669, specifically, the multiple bright areas you see near this galaxy's center are not evidence of multiple black holes. Although they appea...

Hello AZ: Please see my responses interspaced between your original text, below: NGC 2903 is an extraordinarily beautiful object. I take it that the 'bar' in this particular barred- spiral is unusual in having many star-forming regions, rather than being comprised of mainly old stars. Is it possible...

I realize that it may not be entirely "scientifically honest", but I believe that it would still be beneficial if APOD would "clean up" photos of distant deep sky objects by removing the foreground, and therefore irrelevant, stars from those photos. In my opinion, the foreground...

Hello Pegasus: You have touched on an interesting aspect about astrophotography that I constantly wrestle with when producing a new astronomical image. Interestingly, the hues shown in the image on today's APOD are not artificial or falsely colored. They have simply been exagerated through increased...