File:Three ways of looking (19557370769).png

English: Interacting pair NGC 1409 and 1410 seen in some old Hubble STIS observations from 1999. The first is how they appear in raw format (artifacts cleaned off), the middle increases the contrast of smaller structures like the dust lanes, and the right makes the larger swaths of stars and tidal streams easier to see. It is possible to generate a color image with some other available data, but I didn't do that in favor of showing a broader view of the scene.

There was a news release on this at HubbleSite explaining what's going on alongside a color image by William Keel. The idea is that a stream of dust is falling off NGC 1409 and accreting onto NGC 1410. hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2001/2001/02/i...

As usual, with one of Bill's observations, he's also got a web page on the matter. I always enjoy these old pages because they remind me of the short time before the Internet got so sleek and commercialized and because it's a little rare to find an astronomer so consistently writing for the lay person alongside the usual scientific work that is much harder to read. www.astr.ua.edu/keel/research/ngc1410.html

Data from the following proposal was used: Ongoing Mass Transfer in the Galaxy Pair NGC 1409/10

Grayscale image: STIS/CCD MIRVIS 50CCD (o5ev01020_flt)

North is NOT up. It is 94.66° counter-clockwise from up.