NGC 1380 (2012)

The diffuse, fog-like glow surrounding the dusty central disk is created by billions and billions of stars. It still amazes me to think that such a gentle glow is actually the work of so many stars, which, individually and up close, are anything but gentle and soft. The mostly red and some blueish smudges and spheres are many background galaxies with their own billions of stars.

Processing of these types of galaxy is actually quite tedious. If I’m not careful, bands of color will appear where they shouldn’t be which would lead to a deceptively processed image.

Data used:
HST_10911_04_ACS_WFC_F475W_sci
HST_10911_04_ACS_WFC_F814W_sci

Copyright information:
Hubble data is public domain, but I put a lot of work into combining it into beautiful color images. The minimal credit line should read: NASA / ESA / J. Schmidt

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.