M100 (2014)

Yes, I already did this one, but I was looking at it and decided I could be less sloppy about filling in the (evil) chip gap. Also, I think I went a little nuts with the saturation and ended up making it a kind of fantasy blue. The truth is that this galaxy is not really all that colorful, especially if you are looking at just the core of it like Hubble does. Note that I did bump up the saturation just a tad. If you know where to look, you’ll also see supernova 2006X.

Edit: Previously I said the supernova was the bright star. Actually, all that was left at the time of imaging was a light echo illuminating the surrounding dust. There is an annotation so you can see exactly where the light echo is at here.

Previously I had been baffled by the data I found to fill in the chip gap. I guess I was in a rush because I didn’t bother doing a little research to understand what it was I was using. As it turns out, I had found what could be called an antique by Hubble standards. Before the first servicing mission to install the WFPC2 they decided to take a picture of M100 with the WFPC1, which you probably already know had problems which made a lot of people very sad and disappointed for a while even though it was still better than the best ground telescopes at the time. Admittedly, the WFPC1 data really is depressingly bad compared to even WFPC2. And if you put it next to WFC3 data, it looks like a child’s crayon drawing next to a classical painting. But it’s still better than a blank gap!

Red: hst_11646_01_wfc3_uvis_f775w_sci
Green: hst_11646_01_wfc3_uvis_f555w_sci
Blue: hst_11646_01_wfc3_uvis_f475w_sci

Chip gap:
Red: hst_05195_01_wfpc2_f702w_wf_sci + WFPC1 F702W data
Green: hst_05195_01_wfpc2_f555w_wf_sci + WFPC1 F555W data
Blue: hst_05195_01_wfpc2_f439w_wf_sci + WFPC1 F439W data

North is almost up. It is 7.4° counter-clockwise from up.

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.