Featured Image: A New Look at Malin 1

The above image of Malin 1, the faintest and largest low-surface-brightness galaxy ever observed, was obtained with an instrument called Megacam on the 6.5m Magellan/Clay telescope. Gaspar Galaz (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile) and collaborators used Megacam to obtain deep optical observations of Malin 1. They then used novel noise-reduction and image-processing techniques to create this spectacular image of the spiral galaxy — located roughly 1.2 billion light-years away. This new view of Malin 1 reveals details we’ve never before seen, including a stream within the disk that may have been caused by a past interaction between Malin 1 and another galaxy near it. Check out the image to the right for a monochrome, inverted version that makes it a little easier to see some of Malin 1’s features. To see the full original images and to learn more about what the images reveal about Malin 1, see the paper below.

Citation

Gaspar Galaz et al 2015 ApJ 815 L29. doi:10.1088/2041-8205/815/2/L29