“Dec is the angle north or south of the celestial equator, and is expressed in degrees.” “This means that the RA can be expressed in ‘hours’, ‘minutes’ and ‘seconds’.” ![]() “The entire night sky is then carved into 24 slices, known as ‘hours,’ measured eastwards from that starting point (which is designated as zero hour).” “To be more exact, RA measures the longitudinal distance of an astronomical object from the point where the celestial equator (the mid-point between the north and south celestial poles) intersects with the ecliptic (the plane in which Earth orbits around the Sun).” RA is analogous to longitude here on Earth, whilst the Dec corresponds to latitude.” “RA and Dec define the position of an astronomical object in the night sky. “To that end, every SDSS object has a designation that follows the format of: ‘SDSS J,’ followed by the right ascension (RA), and then the declination (Dec).” “In contrast, when a survey as massive in scope as the SDSS is involved, and when huge volumes of data need to be processed in an automated manner, the names assigned to objects need to be both longer, and more informative.” “As the Messier catalogue is so limited, it is sufficient to simply refer to those objects as Messier 1 to Messier 110.” “As an example, the Messier catalogue includes only 110 objects, identified by the French astronomer Charles Messier because they were all getting in the way of his comet-hunting efforts.” “In the early days of astronomy catalogues, astronomers painstakingly recorded individual objects one by one,” Hubble astronomers said. The seemingly rambling name is because this galaxy was observed as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). SDSS J103512.07+461412.2 is located approximately 23 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. ![]() ![]() It is based on data obtained through two filters. The color image is made up of observations from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in the near-infrared and optical parts of the spectrum. This Hubble image shows SDSS J103512.07+461412.2, a spiral galaxy some 23 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major.
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