AM01311-455

The overlapping-galaxy pair AM1311-455 (also listed under the coordinate designation in the ESO catalog but lacking an NGC number), in a true-color composite CCD image. The early-type ringed spiral is clearly in the foreground, with the blue-light extinction in the dusty ring reaching 2 magnitudes. It is particularly noteworthy that the background galaxy can be seen with little dimming inside this ring structure, which may have swept the diffuse interstellar material away from the region just inside the ring. The data were taken with the 1.5-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory by W. Keel, R. White, III, and C. Conselice.

The image was produced from B and I-band frames using a Tektronix 2048x2048 CCD (of which this image is one quadrant), plus a synthetic V image. Galaxy colors are close enough to a one-parameter family that this technique gives a fairly accurate color depiction (and this is what is done for most color HST imagery, as well).

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