Gemini Legacy image of the galaxy group VV 166, obtained using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS), at the Gemini North telescope located on Mauna Kea, Hawai‘i. In this image, north is up, east left, and the field of view is 5.2 x 5.2 arcminutes. Composite color image produced by Travis Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage. Image credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA
Student Image (IC 5332)
The winner of the student division of Australia's 2013 Gemini Astronomy Contest was Isobelle Teljega, who was in Year 8 at St. Margaret's Anglican Girls School in the Brisbane suburb of Ascot, Queensland, Australia. Her entry was submitted for her by Chris Farrelly, who is the Head of Faculty - Science. The school's Astronomy Club, which Mr. Farrelly supervises, had been a contest runner-up each of the previous two years.
Spiral galaxy NGC 7582 is the brightest member of the Grus Quartet of galaxies, some 60 million light-years distant traveling together through space. In this near-infrared image, FLAMINGOS-2 resolved its high quantity of dust that line NGC 7582’s arms as well as regions rich in star formation.
In this near-infrared image, FLAMINGOS-2 peered deep into the heart of spiral galaxy NGC 253, which lies about 11.5 million light-years nearby in the constellation of Sculptor. The new instrument captured an intricate whirlpool of dust spiraling in to a diffuse nuclear region, where violent star formation may be occurring around a supermassive black hole. The instrument also imaged a dusting of star forming sites in its spiral arms.
NGC 6300 is an intriguing barred spiral galaxy in the constellation of Ara. This near-infrared image with FLAMINGOS-2 shows the galaxy’s complex arm structure forming a spectacular ring of star formation. The galaxy’s bar also has a strong vein of dust that almost obscures its bright active nucleus –– whose prodigious energy is the result of matter accreting onto a black hole with an estimated mass of 280,000 Suns.
This image of the ring galaxy NGC 660, obtained with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Fredrick C. Gillett Gemini North telescope was obtained in August of 2012. The image is made from three images taken through g, r, i, and hydrogen alpha filters and assigned the colors of blue, green, orange and red respectively in this color composite image. The field of view is 9.3x5.6 arcminutes and it is oriented 8 degrees clockwise from north at right and east up. The total exposure (integration) time is 1,620 seconds for all filters.
Artist's conception of how the quasar would appear close up. The very hot extremely luminous quasar at the center of the image is very bright at ultraviolet wavelengths, and light from the quasar ionizes the surrounding gas, producing the red color that is characteristic of ionized hydrogen. Faint compact galaxies that have just been born appear in the background. The galaxies' hot stars also ionize their surroundings, but only in the immediate vicinity as they are far less luminous than the quasar which can ionize over a much larger volume.
Image of NGC 6872 (left) and companion galaxy IC 4970 (right) locked in a tango as the two galaxies gravitationally interact. The galaxies lie about 200 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Pavo (the Peacock). Minimum Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA/Australian Gemini Office. Full Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA/Australian Gemini Office, Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club, Travis Rector (University of Alaska, Anchorage), and Ángel López-Sánchez (Australian Astronomical Observatory/Macquarie University).
Artist's concept of what a future telescope might see in looking at the black hole at the heart of the galaxy M87. Clumpy gas swirls around the black hole in an accretion disk, feeding the central beast. The black area at center is the black hole itself, defined by the event horizon, beyond which nothing can escape. The bright blue jet shooting from the region of the black hole is created by gas that never made it into the hole itself but was instead funneled into a very energetic jet.
The starburst galaxy NGC 1313, as imaged by the Gemini South 8-meter telescope in Chile using narrow-band filters in the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph.