Spanish astronomer discovers new active galaxy | Hacker News Reader

Spanish astronomer discovers new active galaxy

phys.org

80 pointswglb20 comments

Sadly, this is a case of mistaken identity.

I downloaded a Hubble Legacy Atlas mosaic image of the Sombrero Galaxy, and found his galaxy ("Iris"), right where he said it was. From the appearance (and the color figures in his paper), it's a nice strongly barred spiral (something I study a lot). Given the very small angular size (roughly 4 arc seconds in diameter), it's probably hundreds of megaparsecs (well over a billion light years) or more away, and so not associated with the Sombrero Galaxy (which is at a distance of only 9 or 10 megaparsecs).

The object is not in the NASA Extragalactic Database (not surprising for something so mall and distant). If you search near its position in Simbad, you do indeed get "PSO J190.0301-11.6124" (listed as "globular cluster candidate"), just as he found -- but it's crucial to note that the latter object's position differs by about nine arc seconds from the position of the "Iris" galaxy. If you look at the Hubble image, you can see a compact, slightly elliptical object at the position of PSO J190.0301-11.6124; its appearance is consistent with being a "globular cluster candidate" associated with the halo of the Sombrero Galaxy. But all the deductions about possible distances, spectral energy distributions, etc., are vitiated by the misidentification.

So while this is a galaxy, it's way, way beyond the Sombrero Galaxy, and I doubt the claimed X-ray source association, so it's probably not an active galaxy. (Well, it could be, but we probably don't have any evidence for that.)

Why would another active-nucleus galaxy be notable, anyway? Aren't we awash in them?

Well, yeah. I was looking at the Veron-Cetty & Veron (2010; http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010A%26A...518A..10V) catalog recently, and it has more than 30,000 AGN galaxies (not counting the > 100,000 quasars/QSOs).

An AGN in a satellite galaxy of a nearby massive galaxy would be a bit interesting; but unfortunately this wasn't such a thing.

This is awesome! Finding an AGN within the halo of a galaxy, especially one as well-studied as the sombrero galaxy, is a bit like discovering a hidden room in a house you've lived in for years. it reshapes our understanding and invites us to question our observational techniques and tools.

also: barred spiral galaxies like the Iris are super neat. If I'm not mistaken (I'm only casually interested in astronomy, not a professional) bar structure is thought to play a crucial role in galactic evolution, funnelling gas towards the center and potentially feeding the AGN. the discovery of an AGN in such a context could shed light on the interplay between galactic morphology and central activity.

If it's really at 65 million light years, it's no satellite at all.

I don't think anyone's claiming that it is a satellite; it's only "in the halo" visually, but the new one further from the Sombrero than we are.

So I pulled up my jpg of the Sombrero galaxy to see (its been my laptop background for a few years). I could barely make out Iris in it. Absolutely awesome though!

Something about the deep field and ultra deep field pictures that makes me happy. Also makes me wonder about how many beings in these other galaxies look out, see Milky Way colliding ever so slowly with Andromeda in their own deep field views.

+1 for the name

Chapeau for this discovery!

Appears to be by a non-professional astronomer, using public HST data, wonderful.

Why is the fact that the person is Spanish relevant enough to merit being included in the headline?

I think it's just a headline writer thing. Searching for "astronomer discovers" it appears there's often an "extra" word. When it's a plurality of astronomers doing the discovering, less so.

Somehow I don't think they would've written the headline "american astronomer discovers..." If the person had been american. To me it kind of seems like "oh look Spanish people trying to do science, so cute".

They would probably write “Illinois astronomer discovers”.

It’s an entropy thing. You don’t write the sun rose in the east, but if it rose in the west that would contain more information.

I think if an American discovered it, and you were reading a Spanish news site (originating from Spain, targeting Spanish citizens), it would not surprise me if the title were "American astronomer discovers ..."

We usually just remark 'from the NASA', is not even needed to put "American". NASA it's worldwide known.

Yeah, but it likely wouldn't be one from NASA. Plenty (most?) astronomy research is done outside of NASA.

Spaniard here. I think you are the one with prejudices, not the OP.

Thinking that of Spaniards when we were behind the first steps of CRISPR, having an astronomical observatory in Tenerife, making crazy revolutionary surgery on transplants in Valencia (and so on), that's a non-issue for actual scientific environments where they are more than aware on our skills.

HN it's mainly a US site, OFC it adds information to the news by pointing that an Spaniard did it. By just putting the surname of the author of the discovery, he might seem to be from any point at the US Southern to the Patagonia in Argentina or the Iberian peninsula.

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