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A truly dark sky has a surface brightness of 2 × 10 −4 cd m −2 or 21.8 mag arcsec −2. [9] [clarification needed] The peak surface brightness of the central region of the Orion Nebula is about 17 Mag/arcsec 2 (about 14 milli nits) and the outer bluish glow has a peak surface brightness of 21.3 Mag/arcsec 2 (about 0.27 millinits). [10]
An image of NGC 45, a low surface brightness spiral galaxy, by GALEX. UGC 477 is located over 110 million light-years away in the constellation of Pisces. [1]A low-surface-brightness galaxy, or LSB galaxy, is a diffuse galaxy with a surface brightness that, when viewed from Earth, is at least one magnitude lower than the ambient night sky.
Though this distance debate was continued and rebutted by a follow up observation which measured the tip of the red-giant branch distance to NGC 1052-DF2 using Hubble Space Telescope, confirming the earlier surface brightness fluctuation measurements and resolving the ambiguous distance.
In contrast, the term brightness in astronomy is generally used to refer to an object's apparent brightness: that is, how bright an object appears to an observer. Apparent brightness depends on both the luminosity of the object and the distance between the object and observer, and also on any absorption of light along the path from object to ...
A more complex definition of absolute magnitude is used for planets and small Solar System bodies, based on its brightness at one astronomical unit from the observer and the Sun. The Sun has an apparent magnitude of −27 and Sirius, the brightest visible star in the night sky, −1.46. Venus at its brightest is -5.
Surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) is a secondary distance indicator used to estimate distances to galaxies. It is useful to 100 Mpc ( parsec ). The method measures the variance in a galaxy's light distribution arising from fluctuations in the numbers of and luminosities of individual stars per resolution element.
Many of these spiral galaxies are probably interacting with the low surface brightness galaxies in the field of view. In some cases, however, it may be difficult to determine whether the companion is physically near the spiral galaxy or whether the companion is a foreground/background source or a source on the edge of the spiral galaxy.
Sometimes there is an observed truncation in the surface brightness profiles of lenticular galaxies at ~ 4 disk scalelengths. [7] These features are consistent with the general structure of spiral galaxies. However, the bulge component of lenticulars is more closely related to elliptical galaxies in terms of morphological classification.