Galaxy Zoo Talk

Star error

  • bluemagi by bluemagi

    Looking at this the centered galaxy looks more like a star. Sdss says its a galaxy (starforming), but I think its an error. Please check this and let me know, thanks BM

    Posted

  • Budgieye by Budgieye moderator

    If it was up to me, I would have said blue star in front of galaxy.

    Well, it seems that this has been studied as a galaxy pair, so I must be wrong.

    enter image description here It looks less like a star when zoomed in in DECaLS viewer

    http://legacysurvey.org/viewer?ra=148.43292443519599&dec=-0.09020666219071358&zoom=14&layer=decals-dr2

    enter image description here SDSS

    http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr9/en/tools/explore/obj.asp?ra=148.43292443519599&dec=-0.09020666219071358 1237648721216929816
    SDSS J095343.89-000524.7

    enter image description here zoomed in SDSS

    enter image description here

    Hydrogen alpha peak at 7110



    The galaxy to the left

    enter image description here in DECaLS 2 viewer

    enter image description here SDSS

    http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr9/en/tools/explore/obj.asp?id=1237648721216929817
    SDSS J095344.33-000525.7

    enter image description here zoomed in SDSS

    enter image description here

    The hydrogen alpha peak is at 7115



    Stars don't have hydrogen alpha emission peaks, because they are not hot enough, so the peak has to be from a galaxy.

    Posted

  • bluemagi by bluemagi

    Thanks. There have been a few centered stars today also.

    Posted

  • mlpeck by mlpeck

    There's no sign of contamination of the spectrum of the bright blue object by a foreground star. This is a nice example of what's called an e(a) type spectrum in the literature, which are galaxies with strong Balmer absorption and at least some detectable emission. The popular interpretation is these are galaxies with dust obscured star formation with an intermediate age population that has emerged from its birth cocoon. See, for example, Balogh et al. (2005), who included this galaxy in their e(a) sample.

    This was also in Goto et al.'s (2003) catalog of Hδ strong galaxies but not in subsequent catalogs of "K+A" galaxies.

    By the way the galaxy to the east has a long tidal tail that's not obvious in the thumbnail or in SDSS imaging.

    Posted

  • Budgieye by Budgieye moderator

    Thank you, mipeck. I am posting the huge tidal trail that you pointed out.

    enter image description here

    enter image description here

    Posted