Galaxy Zoo Talk

odd object in the centre of image

  • Bob_Tonnor by Bob_Tonnor

    can anyone give me any thoughts on what this might be? it seems almost square, any ideas?

    Posted

  • ElisabethB by ElisabethB moderator

    Hi Bob
    this really looks weird. I'd say #artifact, because of it shape. But 'i'm not sure.
    I'll poke one of the scientists to see if they have an idea !
    Watch this space ! 😃

    Posted

  • vrooje by vrooje admin, scientist

    I agree, looks like an artifact.

    There are known bad spots of the WFC3 chip (which is what's used to take the red and green parts of the color image), and it makes sense that that's what this is. When the green filter image was taken it looks like the camera was moved just slightly from where the red filter image was taken (that's common). So the bad pixels were over slightly different parts of the sky, and when the final color image was made with the sky coordinates aligned, the red and green are offset a bit.

    I don't see any hint of a blue square, which also makes sense because the blue image was taken with a different camera (ACS), so it wouldn't have the same bad pixels.

    Posted

  • Bob_Tonnor by Bob_Tonnor

    Hey thanks for that, i was worried that it may have been the Borg!

    Posted