what am I looking at here?....?

Question

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060209.html

lovely spiral galaxy, I know... several others, as well.... love that one in the top left corner near the central galaxy... it's so unusual!!..think it's been warped by the central one?....... but.... all the other bright dots in this picture...... red ones, white one, yellow ones, nearly invisible ones... are they ALL galaxies ???.... there's no errant stars running loose out there, are there?.... ?....

sorry, that's not Andromeda.. that's NGC1309

thank you Geoff for the info about the diffraction spikes on Hubble pics!.. that helps a LOT!.... I love this picture even more now.... wow...

and thanks to you, too, Mercury!.. that article in PhysOrg put a boggle in my mind.... 'galaxy plunging into the center of a group'.... hard to wrap yer brain around all that... mine, anyways... but fun to try!!!...*smile*

Answer 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgg2tpUVbXQ
specifically 5:10 in the video

there can be some loose stars circling the galaxies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globular_cluster
they are called globular cluster, but do have a center with gravity holding these stars in a group

here is an article directly talking about stars forming OUTSIDE galaxies and state that it might be quite common.
http://www.physorg.com/news109513368.html


but in general yes, "most" dots seen outside the (cough!) NGC 1309 galaxy ARE other galaxies seen in the distance.

Answer 2

Chris F is wrong...that's NOT the Andromeda Galaxy, it's NGC 1309 in Eridanus, just west of Orion. And yes, virtually every dot or smudge in that image is a galaxy. There are two obvious stars, one directly above 1309, and one above and to the left in the larger image you get when you click on the image, but cropped out of the main image. You can always spot stars in Hubble images because they have four diffraction spikes caused by the mirror supports in the telescope, which the galaxies lack. The galaxy in the upper left is probably much farther away than 1309, but it certainly looks like something has disrupted it. So there are in fact _thousands_ of distant galaxies in this image. I particularly like the ones that are visible through 1309. This is a great image, thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Answer 3

I would guess most of those to be galaxies, although some of the fuzzy ones look like globular clusters.

When you can see an entire galaxy like this - makes you wonder how many stars with planets that contain life there are....

Answer 4

Yes, a lovely spiral galaxy, indeed!
Most of the the images you see in this picture are galaxies, as well.
There are a few foreground stars in the frame, but it's all just pretty much galaxies!
Clear Skies!
B

Answer 5

The main galaxy is the andromeda Galaxy. It is located about 2 million light years away from us and moving towards us. The other things in the background, red and blue, are all galaxies. There are about 10^11 galaxies in the universe, and you are only seeing a very small portion of them. those galaxies haven't been wrapped up by the center one tho, they are galaxies of equal, or perhaps larger size that are located many billions of light years farther than the Andromeda galaxy in the center.