Transforming Galaxy Redo (2013)

Identified as SDSSJ162702.56+432833.9, this galaxy has no elegant name. Nonetheless, it is interesting because it has recently merged with another galaxy and left long trails of stars strewn all about. It’s actually a specific kind of transforming galaxy which is heading into old age. More details here. Also here, because this galaxy was part of the same study so that description probably fits it pretty well.

Earlier this year I processed this same image. However, it didn’t turn out very well. I couldn’t figure out how to bring out the faint details without increasing the noise to insanely ugly levels. But I came up with some novel (at least to me) ideas on dealing with it and am pretty happy with how it turned out.

Other processing notes: Three bothersome bars of noise where chip gaps were had to be carefully adjusted but I still couldn’t get it perfect. Dragon’s breath emerging from the lower edge of the frame also not completely gone. Elliptical ring pair on the left lower side which I had to clone data over to eliminate. There was a small area of cross talk from the two bright stars near the center of the image. (I have been reading my ACS and WFPC2 CCD anomalies documents lately to make sure I understand things better.)

Red: hst_11643_08_wfc3_uvis_f625w_sci
Green: Pseudo
Blue: hst_11643_08_wfc3_uvis_f438w_sci
North is NOT up.

Copyright information:
Hubble data is public domain, but I put a lot of work into combining it into beautiful color images. The minimal credit line should read: NASA / ESA / J. Schmidt

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.