M81/M82 and Integrated Flux….
A few people have mentioned that there appear to be dark halos around the two galaxies in the M81/M82 image below:
They were saying that its all due to some selective processing I had done on the galaxies themselves. I would have kind of agreed with them, despite my selection of the galaxy cores was a lot closer to the core itself, and not WAAAY out in the dark bits. A couple of other people have suggested they can see the faint whisp of intergrated flux nebuloisty. No, I didnt know what that was either 🙂
UNP_IFNebula details at www.galaxyimages.com
Using the MW3 image from that page and registar to align my RGB image with it, it does appear that the slight difference in background brightness around the two galaxies (and it really is very very slight!, and may not be visible on some monitors if they are set too dark) does tie up well with the integrated flux in the MW3 image. I quickly knocked up this:
(Click on image for full size version)
And an APOD of the same area, showing all that background nebulosity (The M81 Galaxy Group Through the Integrated Flux Nebula, Credit & Copyright: Jordi Gallego). Click on image for larger version.
Posted by Steve under Astronomy | Comments Off on M81/M82 and Integrated Flux….
