Abell 370 (2015)

Note: A version with the colors greatly emphasized is available here.

This month’s News From Hubble talked a bit about this cluster. I’ve seen it before and it’s easy to remember because of the long, smeared galaxy a little below center, also known as the “dragon” for its resemblance to the snake-like creatures of Eastern myth. Future observations of this cluster are planned for Frontier Fields but as of yet they have not been scheduled. One wonders if there will be time for it.

In any case, there is some early Frontier Fields data available for the cluster and I decided to reprocess this using the currently available sets because that long, dragon-like galaxy appeared very red, which looked rather odd. It’s not really a red spiral galaxy but it is rather dynamic both in its lensed shape and in its color. Note how much more varied in coloration it is than the nearby spiral. Either there are some especially old stars in its nucleus or it is very dusty. Not sure which although it strikes me as odd for old, yellow stars to already exist at this distance. Anyway, I could be misreading it so don’t put a lot of stock in what I have to say.

Data can be found here: archive.stsci.edu/prepds/frontier/abell370.html

Red: hlsp_frontier_hst_wfc3ir-30mas_abell370_f160w_v0.2_drz
Yellow: hlsp_frontier_hst_wfc3ir-30mas_abell370_f110w_v0.2_drz
Green: hlsp_frontier_hst_acs-30mas_abell370_f814w_v0.2_drz
Cyan: hlsp_frontier_hst_acs-30mas_abell370_f625w_v0.2_drz
Blue: hlsp_frontier_hst_acs-30mas_abell370_f625w_v0.2_drz

North is 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.