Hubble image of M101

Some of you may have seen this image from hubble recently

hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2006/10/

If you download the very large version 58Mb or so, and zoom in there is an immense amount of detail in the arms. However near the center there appear to be two jets. Well, more like smudged lines actually. Heres the core of the image after being passed though an edge detect filter:


its less obvious in the original unless you go to full resolution, heres the same scale

and heres a bit of the left 'jet' at original resolution

Since the galaxy is head on there shouldnt be any jets visible. In fact given the type of galaxy there shouldnt be any jets. If there are jets they shouldnt be two of them [1], and they should be in opposite directions. These are both in front of the galaxy and dont have a common origin point.

Is this just some artifact of the imaging? Or the work of a grad student not paying attention somewhere and smudging the image? Or are there jets at wierd angles in normal spiral galaxies that I missed reading a lecture about?

Cheers,
~Albert

edit [1] well yes there should, you get pairs of jets, but not on the same side of the galaxy.

Good spot Al,

Looking at the image the galaxy is not precisely face on, it does look slightly tilted to the right. That would make the 'artifact' on the right hand side about the right angle for a jet.

The one on the left looks out of place though? Assuming they are jets and not artifacts, could it be that the one on the left is the result of a black hole which is not localised at the galactic core? Looking at your edge enhanced view there is a brownish patch (at the center of the left 'jet' which looks like it could be near the source? Could this be the accretion disk of a black hole?

Just wild speculation but VERY interesting subject matter.

Looks like its an image artifact, there are others:


Perhaps they are areas where no data was obtained for and the Hubble folks are using old lower resolution data in some places?

if the image is a mosaic, then maybe its were the imagers messed up on the overlapping and missed these areas. :lol:

It looks like it may well be a mosaic with the outer edges (whitish in your enhancement) possibly being lower resolution.

The artifacts seem to be parallel to the edges between the dark/light areas. But the two in the core are a bit odd.

Well spotted though Al. Eyes of a hawk!

Dave

i also spotted this in the full resouluting image (took minutes to open it! hehe) But i though they looked verry "digital" so didnt think more about it then it looked like merging points for mosaic images.