File:Starburst in NGC 5253 (35954719554).png

English: A nearby compact blue dwarf galaxy, NGC 5253 was imaged with Hubble's High Resolution Channel (HRC) on the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to produce this image. A lot of hydrogen gas is present here and is most evident in the narrowband H-alpha filter which appears here in vivid reddish magenta. Numerous young, massive star clusters full of massive stars are visible as mottled, bright, blueish patches.

This is a very close look at the nucleus and star-forming region of the galaxy. Just enough detail is revealed for me to guess at what I'm looking at, and yet not quite enough for me to feel sure. One of the bright patches near the center is rounder and slightly yellower, causing me to suspect it is an old globular cluster. What is interesting to me is that some of the bluer clusters visually appear to have comparable diameters and densities. Pretty impressive. I suspect they contain fewer but brighter, more massive stars.

I am fond of these old ACS/HRC datasets because they are comparatively rare since the HRC stopped functioning in June 2006 and never came back online even after the servicing mission which repaired the rest of the ACS. The observations comprising this image were acquired five months prior in February 2006.

Glancing at the abstract for this paper, we might expect this to one day be observed by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Data primarily came from the following Proposal: Sizes, Shapes, and SEDs: Searching for Mass Segregation in the Super Star Clusters of Nearby Starburst Galaxies

Note: Some lower resolution ACS/WFC data from LEGUS (Proposal 10765) was used to fill in the missing data where the occulting finger was. Some older WFPC2 F656N data from Proposal 6524 was used to slightly enhance the ACS/HRC F656N data.

Red: ACS/HRC F814W + ACS/HRC F656N Green: ACS/HRC F550M Blue: ACS/HRC F435W + ACS/HRC F330W

North is NOT up. It is 25.4° clockwise from up.