APOD: NGC 3572 and the Southern Tadpoles (2019 Nov 08)

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APOD: NGC 3572 and the Southern Tadpoles (2019 Nov 08)

Post by APOD Robot » Fri Nov 08, 2019 5:06 am

Image NGC 3572 and the Southern Tadpoles

Explanation: This cosmic skyscape features glowing gas and dark dust clouds along side the young stars of NGC 3572. A beautiful emission nebula and star cluster in far southern skies, the region is often overlooked by astroimagers in favor of its brighter neighbor, the nearby Carina Nebula. Stars from NGC 3572 are toward the upper left in the telescopic frame that would measure about 100 light-years across at the cluster's estimated distant of 9,000 light-years. The visible interstellar gas and dust is part of the star cluster's natal molecular cloud. Dense streamers of material within the nebula, eroded by stellar winds and radiation, clearly trail away from the energetic young stars. They are likely sites of ongoing star formation with shapes reminiscent of the cosmic Tadpoles of IC 410 better known to northern skygazers. In the coming tens to hundreds of millions of years, gas and stars in the cluster will be dispersed though, by gravitational tides and by violent supernova explosions that end the short lives of the massive cluster stars.

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Ann
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Re: APOD: NGC 3572 and the Southern Tadpoles (2019 Nov 08)

Post by Ann » Fri Nov 08, 2019 7:18 am

I really like this picture, but it drove me crazy! 😵

My first thought was, oh, NGC 3532, yes, that's the Wishing Well cluster. A nice one. But hey, wait a minute - NGC 3572? What's that? Why have I never heard of that one?

So I checked my software and got totally confused. The first thing I saw when I asked Guide to take me to NGC 3572 was a big, sparsely populated dashed circle described as Collinder 240. I googled Collinder 240 star cluster and got the Coathanger asterism, Collinder 399. Thanks a million, Google.

My software also showed me dashed circles named Hogg 10 and Hogg 11 without any stars inside. Thanks, Guide. I searched for Hogg 10 and 11 on the net, Google gave me Ima Hogg (the name for some reason made me think of Miss Piggy) and, after a non-negligible amount of persuasion, Google eventually gave me this 1974 paper.

Then I zoomed into Collinder 240 in my software and found NGC 3572, which looked like a total confusion. Instead of clearly marked clickable dots representing stars I got a blurry, messy gray black and white photo made up of a mixture of non-clickable bleeding pixel light sources and clickable dots overlapping other light sources. Five of the clickable dots were an angry red color, as if they represented stars as red as Betelgeuse. Well, I didn't see any deep red stars in either the APOD or in the ESO picture. Even though the dots were clickable, they contained no information apart from the stars' J-K magnitude.

So I tried to compare the position of the brightest stars I could see with the position of the stars in the ESO picture. Again it drove me crazy, until I realized that the ESO picture wasn't north up. I was still unable to make a mental "shift" of the picture to figure out the positions of the stars in the ESO picture compared with the north up position of NGC 3572 in my software. By the way, I'm not sure that today's APOD is north up, either.

To make the situation impossible, my software, which usually shows me nebulas as gray outlines, showed me no nebulosity whatsoever around NGC 3572.

So I returned to the 1974 paper about southern clusters and their reddening. And lo and behold! There, on page 148, was a black and white picture of NGC 3572! I could, indeed, match the positions of the stars in the black and white picture in my software with the black and white picture of the NGC 3572 in the 1974 paper. Note the total absence of nebulosity in the 1974 picture.

Okay. I am convinced that my software really shows me NGC 3572. I'm less certain of today's APOD and the ESO picture!

One more thing. Today's APOD looks pretty darn brilliant. It looks better than the ESO picture. Bear in mind that NGC 3572 is not only close to the Carina Nebula (not all that close, though), but it is faint! Really! The brightest star in it, according to my software, is an eight magnitude star of spectral class B2.

So I will say that Josep M. Drudis has shown us a spectacular portrait of a cluster and its nebulosity that has so far flown completely under the radar in the world of Google.

NGC 3572.png
NGC 3572 (top, in the top left picture) with Hogg 10 and 11.

Ann
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Re: APOD: NGC 3572 and the Southern Tadpoles (2019 Nov 08)

Post by orin stepanek » Fri Nov 08, 2019 12:22 pm

220px-Tadpoles_10_days.jpg
:mrgreen: baby frogs! Heavenly creatures in today's APOD :D
Picture found in wikipedia!
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Re: APOD: NGC 3572 and the Southern Tadpoles (2019 Nov 08)

Post by neufer » Fri Nov 08, 2019 2:31 pm

Click to play embedded YouTube video.
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https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190528.html
Art Neuendorffer

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Re: APOD: NGC 3572 and the Southern Tadpoles (2019 Nov 08)

Post by Boomer12k » Sat Nov 09, 2019 2:53 am

Really great image. Not the first time on APOD...

The left side looks like a person riding the top of a giant space dog's head...to me anyway... what an interesting place.

:---[===] *

khh

Re: APOD: NGC 3572 and the Southern Tadpoles (2019 Nov 08)

Post by khh » Mon Nov 11, 2019 4:22 am

Boomer12k wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 2:53 am Really great image. Not the first time on APOD...

The left side looks like a person riding the top of a giant space dog's head...to me anyway... what an interesting place.

:---[===] *
Yes, I see that! It looks like he has a space suit on and he's holding out both arms. Way cool.