Radio Galaxy Zoo Talk

Just testing the waters

  • rtconr by rtconr

    I'm fairly new to this, so I just want to see what kind of discussions typically occur around here. I found this interested because most of the other infrared sources associated with these radio sources seem to be either invisible in infrared, or very well defined. This one appears to me to be a very powerful, very distant object based only my limited experience and a little intuition. How many people are active here?

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  • rtconr by rtconr

    After viewing 50+ more of these, I'm glad that I threw this one up. If anyone that admins this site, or was part of the development of this tool, thank you 5000 times!

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  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to rtconr's comment.

    Welcome to Galaxy Zoo: Radio, rtconr!

    This is, as I'm sure you've already discovered, a #doublelobe. The IR source is a little offset from the mid-point of the lobes; whether that's due to a mis-alignment of the radio contours or is real, I don't think anyone can say yet.

    The IR source is likely to be SDSS J142627.62+284056.3, which is a really faint galaxy, faint in the optical bands the SDSS images use. Its redshift - as estimated photometrically (which basically means from its colors, not its spectrum, of which there is none) - is ~0.58, which is about as distant even a giant elliptical galaxy can be seen in SDSS, unless we are looking down on the accretion disk of an AGN (in which case it would likely be classed as a STAR, but its colors would be odd).

    Here's the SDSS field, centered on this galaxy (somewhat zoomed in, but the same orientation):

    enter image description here

    Happy hunting! 😃

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  • rtconr by rtconr

    Thank you for the response! I feel I might have been thinking in the right direction in that it seemed to me to be a fairly distant object! I think this site, along with the Milky Way Project, will quickly become a much needed mental exercise. Again, I appreciate your input, and I hope that any other questions I might have in time could be answered by someone as thorough and engaging as you have been.

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  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to rtconr's comment.

    You're most welcome!

    Questions are always welcome, and if I can answer, I'd be only to happy to try.

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