Doing the "Impossible" Imaging Voorwerpjes

I'm jumping out of order here. Normally I post in order taken (FIFO) which means I'm processing and posting February images. But I took an image in late May trying the "impossible". Likely needing more data I processed it last night to see if I'd caught anything. Turned out a surprising success. I'm posting this while it is still in the sky for those who, like me, push the envelope of what amateur imaging can accomplish. First some background.

As most know by now I like to go where most amateurs fear to tread. Back in the fall of 2008 it was announced that a Dutch school teacher, Hanny van Arkel, looking at Galaxy Zoo images saw something odd. Hundreds had looked at the same image before her but she was the only one to wonder "What's that?" and post the question. It turned out to be a green object outside the obscure galaxy, IC 2497. It was bright green though on the Sloan images it was blue. At the time it was a mystery. Fortunately the moon was out of the sky and it was well placed so I gave it a try to see if I could pull it out. Digital astro-imaging was still new to me and I wanted to test its limits. It turned out to be relatively easy, not a difficult test after all. Still it became the first amateur image of it as far as I and Hanny could determine. A check of Google images fails to turn up an amateur image of it even now. Though it misses many posted to Flickr and the like. Still it surprises me a unique but rather easily imaged object is so ignored by most amateur astro-imagers. It was later determined to be a cloud of mostly oxygen illuminated by a now faded QSO in the heart of the galaxy, possibly left over from something IC 2497 digested. Were there others? Galaxies devour their kind constantly so it seemed likely.

Back in April, 2015 the HST group announced they had found similar objects lit by a few other galaxies so it wasn't unique after all, just very rare. One of their discoveries, NGC 5972, was well placed in my sky in early June so I had to give it a try. Like Hanny's Voorwerp (voorwerp is Dutch for "object") these are green. Due to June skies allowing me only time for one of my typical 100 minute image runs in dark skies I took one round of data on it. I expected more would be needed as this is much fainter than Hanny's Voorwerp. I was wrong. I may not have HST resolution but much of the green object is seen. Yet again it wasn't as difficult as I expected.

It is thought these are gas clouds lit by light echos of long faded quasars in the heart of these galaxies. I am guessing they are blue in the Sloan image because those include Ultraviolet mapped to deep blue along with blue mapped to a lighter-blue. This Ultraviolet light may be stronger than the green or blue causing the color shift. In my pure LRGB image the green is the natural result even after I subtract green from air glow I have in my images. The green is apparently due to OIII shifted by cosmological redshift from its normal teal to green. The shift is too great to allow standard OIII filters to be used on these so I've not attempted that.

You can read more about these Voorwerpjes (Dutch for "objects") at http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astro...ast-042215234/

Redshift puts the galaxy about 410 million light-years distant. HST data says a 40" filament is 75,000 light-years long at the distance to NGC 5972. That works out to a distance of just under 390 million light-years. A rather good agreement as these distances go. Using the HST distance I get a size of 166,000 light-years for the galaxy including the small puff of green just south of the galaxy. The galaxy was discovered by Édouard Stephan on June 29, 1880. It is listed as S0-a or S0/a depending on the source.

For those new to my posts I'm including my November 2008 image of Hanny's Voorwerp after my three images of NGC 5972. It isn't nearly as impossible as most seem to think it to be.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick

Since posting this I learned "voorwerpjes" means little objects. The plural of voorwerp is voorwerpen. Don't trust astronomy sites to translate foreign words! I don't understand why they chose that term when these are as big as a galaxy.

Rick

Originally Posted by WA0CKY

I'm jumping out of order here. Normally I post in order taken (FIFO) which means I'm processing and posting February images. But I took an image in late May trying the "impossible". Likely needing more data I processed it last night to see if I'd caught anything. Turned out a surprising success. I'm posting this while it is still in the sky for those who, like me, push the envelope of what amateur imaging can accomplish. First some background.

As most know by now I like to go where most amateurs fear to tread. Back in the fall of 2008 it was announced that a Dutch school teacher, Hanny van Arkel, looking at Galaxy Zoo images saw something odd. Hundreds had looked at the same image before her but she was the only one to wonder "What's that?" and post the question. It turned out to be a green object outside the obscure galaxy, IC 2497. It was bright green though on the Sloan images it was blue. At the time it was a mystery. Fortunately the moon was out of the sky and it was well placed so I gave it a try to see if I could pull it out. Digital astro-imaging was still new to me and I wanted to test its limits. It turned out to be relatively easy, not a difficult test after all. Still it became the first amateur image of it as far as I and Hanny could determine. A check of Google images fails to turn up an amateur image of it even now. Though it misses many posted to Flickr and the like. Still it surprises me a unique but rather easily imaged object is so ignored by most amateur astro-imagers. It was later determined to be a cloud of mostly oxygen illuminated by a now faded QSO in the heart of the galaxy, possibly left over from something IC 2497 digested. Were there others? Galaxies devour their kind constantly so it seemed likely.

Back in April, 2015 the HST group announced they had found similar objects lit by a few other galaxies so it wasn't unique after all, just very rare. One of their discoveries, NGC 5972, was well placed in my sky in early June so I had to give it a try. Like Hanny's Voorwerp (voorwerp is Dutch for "object") these are green. Due to June skies allowing me only time for one of my typical 100 minute image runs in dark skies I took one round of data on it. I expected more would be needed as this is much fainter than Hanny's Voorwerp. I was wrong. I may not have HST resolution but much of the green object is seen. Yet again it wasn't as difficult as I expected.

It is thought these are gas clouds lit by light echos of long faded quasars in the heart of these galaxies. I am guessing they are blue in the Sloan image because those include Ultraviolet mapped to deep blue along with blue mapped to a lighter-blue. This Ultraviolet light may be stronger than the green or blue causing the color shift. In my pure LRGB image the green is the natural result even after I subtract green from air glow I have in my images. The green is apparently due to OIII shifted by cosmological redshift from its normal teal to green. The shift is too great to allow standard OIII filters to be used on these so I've not attempted that.

You can read more about these Voorwerpjes (Dutch for "objects") at http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astro...ast-042215234/

Redshift puts the galaxy about 410 million light-years distant. HST data says a 40" filament is 75,000 light-years long at the distance to NGC 5972. That works out to a distance of just under 390 million light-years. A rather good agreement as these distances go. Using the HST distance I get a size of 166,000 light-years for the galaxy including the small puff of green just south of the galaxy. The galaxy was discovered by Édouard Stephan on June 29, 1880. It is listed as S0-a or S0/a depending on the source.

For those new to my posts I'm including my November 2008 image of Hanny's Voorwerp after my three images of NGC 5972. It isn't nearly as impossible as most seem to think it to be.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick