Radio Galaxy Zoo Talk

Hi there

  • atadevos by atadevos

    Can someone tell me why this image radio is a little bit offset than IR ?

    Posted

  • JeanTate by JeanTate

    Because the IR source is a fairly bright star in our own galaxy (with the unweildly name of SDSS J141440.54+195633.3), but the radio source is (very likely) an extremely distant galaxy which just happens - by chance - to be close to the line of sight to the star. It's so distant that it's not detected by SDSS.

    Here's the field in SDSS DR10, centered on the radio source (it has a similar scale, and the same orientation); the orange-red object is a star, which looks much smaller in the SDSS image because the angular resolution is considerably better (~1.4" vs ~5")

    enter image description here

    Alternatively, the bright MW star and the radio source could be physically related to each other ... maybe an astronomer can tell us just how unusual that would be?

    Posted