UGC 4881, Arp 55, Grasshopper Galaxy
![Picture](/uploads/7/5/0/9/75097535/ugc4881lrgb-ht-scnr-crop-tgvd-mt-unshrp-ht-tgvd-flip-annotated-l-invert_orig.jpg)
The Grasshopper Galaxy (designated UGC 4881 or Arp 55) is a bright pair of interacting galaxies, located about 527 million light-years away from Earth in the northern constellation of Lynx. The galaxies are speeding away from us at some 11,782 kilometers per second.
The colliding galaxies are thought to be halfway through a merger: the cores of the parent galaxies are still clearly separated, but their disks are overlapping. The Grasshopper has a bright curly tail containing a remarkable number of star clusters, and a vigorous burst of star formation may have just started as shown by the image crop whose histogram has been manipulated with midtones set to 0.700 to show the bright knots of star formation.
A Type II or Type Ib/c supernova called SN 1999gw was discovered in The Grasshopper on December 16, 1999. This discovery was obtained by an infrared monitoring campaign, aimed at detecting obscured supernovae. Finding SN 1999gw in the infrared indicates that optical surveys probably miss a significant fraction of supernovae, especially in obscured systems such as starburst galaxies.
There are two supernovae types: Type I and Type II. The Type I does not show hydrogen in the spectra. Type II are explosions of massive stars showing hydrogen in their spectra.
The colliding galaxies are thought to be halfway through a merger: the cores of the parent galaxies are still clearly separated, but their disks are overlapping. The Grasshopper has a bright curly tail containing a remarkable number of star clusters, and a vigorous burst of star formation may have just started as shown by the image crop whose histogram has been manipulated with midtones set to 0.700 to show the bright knots of star formation.
A Type II or Type Ib/c supernova called SN 1999gw was discovered in The Grasshopper on December 16, 1999. This discovery was obtained by an infrared monitoring campaign, aimed at detecting obscured supernovae. Finding SN 1999gw in the infrared indicates that optical surveys probably miss a significant fraction of supernovae, especially in obscured systems such as starburst galaxies.
There are two supernovae types: Type I and Type II. The Type I does not show hydrogen in the spectra. Type II are explosions of massive stars showing hydrogen in their spectra.
- Right Ascension: 09h 17m 13s, Declination: +44deg 15m 04s
- Constellation: Lynx
- Distance: 527 Mly
- Apparent magnitude: 15.6
- Apparent size: 0.7 x 0.5 arcmin
- Date: February – April 2020
- Exposure: Lum: 4.83 hrs, Red: 2.33 hrs, Green: 2.17 hrs, Blue: 2.5 hrs (total hrs 11.8)
- Instrument: RCOS 20 inch at f8.1 (fl=4116 mm), SBIG ST8-XME (I pixel=0.458 arc-sec)
- Processing: PixInsight