Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/NGC 5866

NGC

Original - This is a unique view of the disk galaxy NGC 5866 tilted nearly edge-on to the line-of-sight. The Hubble Space Telescope's sharp vision reveals a crisp dust lane dividing the galaxy into two halves. The image highlights the galaxy's structure: a subtle, reddish bulge surrounding a bright nucleus, a blue disk of stars running parallel to the dust lane, and a transparent outer halo. Viewed face on, it would look like a smooth, flat disk with little spiral structure. It remains in the spiral category because of the flatness of the main disk of stars as opposed to the more spherically rotund (or ellipsoidal) class of galaxies called "ellipticals." Such S0 galaxies, with disks like spirals and large bulges like ellipticals, are called lenticular galaxies.

Edit 1 An attempt at a crop; mostly cut from the bottom.

Reason

A high resolution, high quality Hubble image. It has excellent enc., and seems to tick the various boxes.

Articles this image appears in

Galaxy, Lenticular galaxy, NGC 5866, Messier 102, Herschel 400 Catalogue

NGC 5866 Group

Creator

NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

• Support as nominator --Spencer^T♦C 19:06, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
  • As the nominator, I'd like to note that this image is a PNG. The equivalent JPG image, File:Ngc5866 hst big.jpg, is at a much lesser quality. (The original NASA image was a TIF). I have replaced the JPG instances with the PNG image. Thanks, Spencer^T♦C 19:09, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support--Mbz1 (talk) 21:43, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support - Darn, the only galaxy pic Jerry and I missed! ;) Ceran^→//forge 22:00, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
• Comment The current framing feels odd. Any possibility of a centring crop? Noodle snacks (talk) 08:04, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
  • One moment, I'll upload a cropped one. Spencer^T♦C 21:51, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
    • It's proving somewhat difficult...do you want the star in the upper right or not? If I take it out and then center, the image feels too narrow and restricted. I can, however center it to the top and bottom, but then some of the bottom "lighter halo area" gets cut off while the top remains intact. Spencer^T♦C 22:00, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
      • I've uploaded a crop. I cropped mostly from the bottom to get an equal distance from the top of NGC to the top of the image and the bottom of NGC to the bottom of the image. Personally, I still prefer the original, although the crop I uploaded may be a tad too liberal. Spencer^T♦C 02:30, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support original only, oppose crop - the glowing, um, cloud of stars? extends to the bottom, and so should the crop. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 08:00, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
• Weak support original, support crop shame we couldn't get the whole thing in.Terri G (talk) 13:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support crop: Very interesting. Really like the star in the upper right, too. Don't think the crop has cut off anything critical and it's better centred. Maedin\^talk 18:47, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support Original Per Shoemaker's Holiday. — Jake Wartenberg 19:33, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Promoted File:Ngc5866 hst big.png MER-C 07:42, 26 February 2009 (UTC)