File:NGC 4490 (35539292900).png

English: Another galaxy from the Hubble Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS). Didn't feel like getting into anything more involved quite yet. The LEGUS datasets are fun to work with, and very aesthetically appealing. It is easy to get lost in them, which is good for offloading some stress.

This rather messy assortment of star formation is said to be a barred spiral galaxy, but I confess I have a hard time seeing it even in widefield view. It kinda looks like all bar and no spiral to me. I wonder what it looked like before its interaction with NGC 4485? From our vantage point in spacetime, we'll never know, but right now we can see the interaction has caused such a ruckus of star formation that the whole thing appears quite blue and full of young stars and pinkish clouds of ionized hydrogen. These hot-burning stars also explode relatively quickly, making this galaxy host to many supernovas.

The filters used for the LEGUS also result in very colorful finished images, and it is not necessary to use any sort of saturation boost to make it appear this colorful.

This image is possible thanks to the following two proposals:

LEGUS: Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey - HST Proposal 13364

H-alpha LEGUS: Unveiling the Interplay Between Stars, Star Clusters, and Ionized Gas - HST Proposal 13773

Note: Data for this image can be downloaded from the HLA, but the processing is better if you download it from this page: archive.stsci.edu/prepds/legus/dataproducts-public.html

The F657N data is not on the LEGUS page and must be obtained from the HLA as of this writing. Additional note - get the drc file from DADS instead of the drz. It won't open with FITS Liberator, but you can open it with SAOImage DS9, resave it, and then use Liberator. The drc is much cleaner than the drz.

Red: WFC3/UVIS F657N + WFC3/UVIS F814W Green: WFC3/UVIS F438W + WFC3/UVIS F555W Blue: WFC3/UVIS F275W + WFC3/UVIS F336W

North is 14.9° clockwise from up.