I found a smaller version of this image that I can post directly (grinning smugly):
Hubblesite wrote:
The
gruesome palette of these galaxies is owed to a mix of mid-infrared light from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, and visible and ultraviolet light from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
While I wouldn't go so far as to call the palette gruesome, I do think it is a bit much. So let's look at a few other pictures of this pair, first in optical light:
I do find this picture a bit ugly, because of its dominant dirty yellow-brown palette. This color is particularly obvious in the background color in the disk of NGC 2207. I mean this color:
NGC 2207 detail NASA ESA Hubble Heritage.png
I could compare the color to something, but I'd rather not. You might be eating.
There is another picture where the overall disk color of NGC 2207 (minus the sites of obvious star formation) is bluish:
Nice, isn't it? NGC 2207 looks like a large soft haphazardly shaped bluish cloud with a yellow center and bits of pink and blue star formation scattered in the cloud. IC 2163, by contrast, looks all the more concentrated, although drawn-out in
one direction.
We have good reasons to believe that the disk of NGC 2207 is indeed bluer than the bulge surrounding the core of NGC 2207. The bulge stars are not blue at all but definitely yellow. Almost certainly most of the bulge stars are old, and they were born from (now depleted) gas that had been recycled through many episodes of star formation and supernova explosions (and the death of red giant stars), and was therefore metal-rich and relatively "opaque". The stellar population away from the bulge (minus the regions of star formation) can be expected to have formed from gas that was less metal-rich and less opaque, and the disk population may also contain a not insignificant number of bluish A-type stars.
Also there is still fresh gas to be had in the disk, which is why NGC 2207 has so many seemingly haphazardly scattered sites of star formation, with young clusters and pink emission nebulas.
But even I must admit that NGC 2207/IC 2163 look their most magnificent in a pure MIRI mid infrared image:
Note how one arm from IC 2163 appears to cross over into NGC 2207 and join with one arm of NGC 2207! I don't think it is happening for real, particularly since IC 2163 is behind NGC 2207, but it is fun to imagine.
NGC 2207 IC 2163 MIRI Thomas Carpentier annotated.png
Arm from IC 2163 crossing over and joining NGC 2207?
Not likely, but fun to imagine!
Ann
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Colliding Spiral Galaxies from Webb and Hubble
