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Since I'm a complete noob at astronomy, I wanted to ask a couple of basic questions about the image: 1. What causes the bright flares/flashes around some brigh
by leto_ii 4y ago
Since I'm a complete noob at astronomy, I wanted to ask a couple of basic questions about the image:
1. What causes the bright flares/flashes around some bright starts/galaxies?
2. What are the elongated traces that look as if the telescope moved/rotated while capturing the image?
3. Why do some of the smaller flares seem to be doubled (e.g. 3 stars in the top-right corner of the image)?
Thanks in advance to anybody patient enough to explain.
- kryptiskt 4y ago1. Those are diffraction spikes that reflects the structure of the mirror, which is composed of hexagonal elements. 2. That is background galaxies that are distorted and heavily magnified due to gravitational lensing, gravity from a foreground galaxy can bend the light just like a lens (the sun bending the light from stars during an eclipse was an early test of general relativity just after WWI)
- 8note 4y agoDuplication can also come from gravitation lensing, as the light from the bright thing bends around either side of the heavy thing
- tkinom 4y agoThere should be some post post-processing algorithms that can remove/clean hex elements, right?
- peppertree 4y agoI can see lots of galaxies that are rather dim. Are the stars with diffraction spikes really close or just extra bright?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]