Noel Carboni
April 15th, 2007, 12:12 AM
NGC 6441 is a distant globular in Scorpius, and it's scientifically interesting in that it seems to contain one of the very few planetary nebulae found in a glob (faintly visible just to the right of the core), as well as an xray source, pulsar, and possible black hole. All these interesting things have been studied using the Hubble, but no one's ever attempted to create a full-color visible spectrum image from the various Hubble exposures before. I assembled this mosaic from several dozen Hubble exposures using a variety of filters.
This image shows off the incredible resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. Keep in mind this image is only about 2 arc-minutes (120 arc-seconds) across in the wide dimension! And you should know that there are some Hubble exposures, for example of the central core, that are of a significantly higher resolution than shown here, as taken by the (now no longer functioning) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). However, I had to use the lower resolution of the Wide Field Planetary Camera II (WFPC II) with which most of the cluster has been imaged.
Without further ado, I give you NGC 6441 in unprecedented resolution! Click on the image to see a higher resolution image.
http://ncarboni2.home.att.net/NGC6441_Hubble_Processed_by_Noel_Carboni_Small.jpg (http://ncarboni2.home.att.net/NGC6441_Hubble_Processed_by_Noel_Carboni.jpg)
By the way, here's what this same cluster looks like through my modest ground-based 10" LX200 telescope:
http://www.ourdarkskies.com/gallery2/d/416-1/NGC6441_Small.jpg
-Noel
This image shows off the incredible resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. Keep in mind this image is only about 2 arc-minutes (120 arc-seconds) across in the wide dimension! And you should know that there are some Hubble exposures, for example of the central core, that are of a significantly higher resolution than shown here, as taken by the (now no longer functioning) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). However, I had to use the lower resolution of the Wide Field Planetary Camera II (WFPC II) with which most of the cluster has been imaged.
Without further ado, I give you NGC 6441 in unprecedented resolution! Click on the image to see a higher resolution image.
http://ncarboni2.home.att.net/NGC6441_Hubble_Processed_by_Noel_Carboni_Small.jpg (http://ncarboni2.home.att.net/NGC6441_Hubble_Processed_by_Noel_Carboni.jpg)
By the way, here's what this same cluster looks like through my modest ground-based 10" LX200 telescope:
http://www.ourdarkskies.com/gallery2/d/416-1/NGC6441_Small.jpg
-Noel