SUNSET: 
0
Photographer:
Hal Heaton
Location of Photo:
Chilescope, Telescopes 2 and 3
Date/Time of photo:
Several moonless nights between late March 2021 and early April, 2022
Equipment:
Telescope: ASA 0.5-m Newtonian, field-corrected (f/3.8); Camera: Unbinned FLI ProLine 16803; Filters: Astrodon Red, Green, Blue and H-alpha; Exposure Time: Guided, 5 and 10-min (stacked for 2.3, 2.2, 3.3 and 2.3-hr, respectively); Plate Scale: 0.97 arcsec/pixel
Description:
Large spiral galaxies slowly assemble over time as they accrete stars, gas and dark matter from dwarf satellites that are captured into orbit and tidally disrupted. The moderately-inclined Umbrella Galaxy (NGC 4651) shown here provides a striking example of this process. Located 62 million light years away in Coma Berenices, an enormous stellar jet terminated by an umbrella-shaped arc extends nearly 100 thousand light-years to the east from the galaxy’s center. Shell-like plumes can be seen on the opposite side of the disk. These structures, produced when a small galaxy disintegrated as it swept back and forth through the disk, are generally consistent with multiple wrappings of a single tidal stream. North is down and east is to the left.
