There is now a handy press release by the Hubble people available here or at ESA’s website.
What’s going on with this galaxy? It is being stripped of cool gas. Taking a step back and viewing it with Chandra, some more details emerge. I definitely recommend reading that article if you want to know more.
I wish there was some H-alpha data for this so the star formation and the various tails could be more easily seen. The galaxy is behind a screen of foreground stars from our Milky Way which makes it hard to discern the fainter details. The available data isn’t optimal for creating a color image so the colors seem kind of off but it’s still pretty neat looking.
Red: HST_11683_01_ACS_WFC_F814W_sci + some WFC3/IR (F160W) data from DADS
Green: HST_11683_01_ACS_WFC_F475W_sci + HST_11683_01_ACS_WFC_F814W_sci
Blue: hst_11683_a1_wfc3_uvis_f275w_sci + HST_11683_01_ACS_WFC_F475W_sci
North is NOT up. It is 21.9° 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.