Hi, my name is
Richard de Grijs. I'm a Dutch scientist working in the Department of Physics and
Astronomy at the University of Sheffield. The image above is of a galaxy
called M82. The galaxy is
sometimes called the Cigar Galaxy (though the Sausage Galaxy could be a better
name). But M82 is a wreck. Something has shaken up its spiral arms and created a
massive bout of star formation. That’s
why it looks like a gigantic glowing sausage.
Galaxies don’t evolve like this by themselves; M82 is the victim of a
hit-and-run accident.
Images
recording visible light can reveal clouds of dust and glowing gas. But these
clouds block our view of what’s inside a galaxy.
Images
recording infrared can reveal the internal structure of these clouds.
Gas and dust is nearly transparent to infrared so that the star clusters
inside the clouds are easily visible.
In fact the beaten up body of M82 is the brightest galaxy in the sky in
infrared light.
Your task is
to use HST’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) to obtain images of the
central part of M82 in both visible light and infrared wavelengths.
You should then
combine these two images using Registax so that the features from both sources
can be seen on the stacked image.
Use
Cartes du Ciel to locate M82 and create a constellation map of its position.
R.A.
09h 55m 52.22s
Dec.
+69° 40' 46.9"
Click above to obtain an image of M82 in visible light
Click above to
obtain an image of M82 in infrared
The
filters used for the original data were:[WFPC2] F814W (IR), F555W (Vis), F439W
(Blue),F656N (Ha)
[NICMOS near IR] F110W, F160W
To compare your
results to ours and find out more about the science from these images click here
To check the
position of M82 click here
Other scientists involved in obtaining the images: R. O'Connell (Univ. Virginia), J. Gallagher (Univ. Wisc-Madison), D. Hunter (Lowell Obs.) P. Shopbell (Cal Tech), R. Dufour (Rice Univ.), J. Cohen (Cal Tech), J. Bland-Hawthorn (AAO)