News Release Archive:

News Release 42 of 257

March 3, 2009 06:00 AM (EST)

News Release Number: STScI-2009-10

Trio of Galaxies Mix It Up

Technical facts about this news release:

About the Object

Object Name:	Hickson Compact Group 90 (HCG 90), M59
Object Description:	Cluster of Interacting Galaxies
Position (J2000):	R.A. 22h 02m 05s.62 Dec. -31° 58' 00".44
Constellation:	Pisces Austrinus
Distance:	106 million light-years (33 megaparsecs)
Dimensions:	This image is roughly 3.2 arcminutes (1,000,000 light-years or 31,000 parsecs) wide.

About the Data

Science Team:	This image was created from HST data from proposal 10554: R. Sharples (University of Durham), M. Beasley (University of California, Santa Cruz), J. Blakeslee (Dominion Astrophysical Observatory), S. Zepf and A. Kundu (Michigan State University), and J. Cho (University of Durham).
Instrument:	ACS/WFC
Exposure Date(s):	May 16, 2006
Exposure Time:	1.2 hours
Filters:	F475W (g) and F850LP (z)

About the Release

Image Credit:

NASA, ESA, and R. Sharples (University of Durham)

Release Date:

March 3, 2009

Color

The image is a composite of separate exposures made by the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Two filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are:

F850LP (z)	red
F475W (g)+F850LP (z)	green
F475W (g)	blue

Orientation/Scale: