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Andulka
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Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
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Show & Tell
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YOU ARE THE REASON
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
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#extradirty
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@stidus
How our Milky Way galaxy got its spiral arms
The shape of the Milky Way galaxy, our solar system’s home, may look a bit like a snail, but spiral galaxies haven’t always had this structure, scientists say.
In a recent report, a team of researchers said they now know when and how the majestic swirls of spiral galaxies emerged in the universe. Galaxies are categorized into three main types, based on their shapes: spiral, elliptical and irregular. Almost 70 percent of those closest to the Milky Way are spirals. But in the early universe, spiral galaxies didn’t exist.
A husband and wife team of astronomers, Debra Meloy Elmegreen at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Bruce Elmegreen at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., analyzed an image from the Hubble Space Telescope known as the Ultra Deep Field. It was taken over a four-month period in late 2003 and early 2004. The picture shows about 10,000 galaxies of different ages, some nearly as old as the universe itself.
To analyze this image, the researchers first sorted the galaxies into several basic types, “such as disk-like, clumpy, elliptical, tadpole-shape and double,” said Debra Elmegreen. “We did this for all of the galaxies larger than 10 pixels in diameter, which we thought were large enough to classify, [which came to] about 1000 galaxies.”
The scientists then used these classifications to study the most peculiar type of galaxy, a “very clumpy” type that does not really occur anymore in the current universe. However, the researchers established that most young galaxies were born very clumpy, because of gravitational instabilities in a highly turbulent, gas-rich disk.
Out of 269 spiral galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the researchers analyzed 41. They discarded galaxies when it was impossible to determine a clear spiral structure or when there wasn’t enough data to establish the galaxy’s age. The researchers then sorted these 41 spiral galaxies into five different types, according to whether they were clumpy or smooth, well-defined or not, and the number and clarity of spiral arms they had. Next, the Elmegreens catalogued the properties of each galaxy type, such as its age, the size of clumps inside and its brightness at various frequencies.
The researchers found that the universe was a very chaotic place in its infancy. The first galaxies were disks with massive, bright, star-forming clumps and little regular structure. To develop the nice spiral forms seen today, galaxies first had to settle down, or “cool,” from the previous chaotic phase. This evolution took several billion years.
Gradually, the galaxies that were to become spirals lost most of their big clumps, and a central, bright bulge would appear; the smaller clumps throughout the galaxy would begin to form indistinct, “woolly” spiral arms.
These arms would only become very distinct arms once the universe was about 3.6 billion years old. At that age, as the galaxies had a chance to settle down, the turbulence decreased, and new stars would form in a much quieter disk. “We can see the transition from the early chaotic state to the modern, relaxed state,” said Bruce Elmegreen.
These first spiral galaxies were either two-armed structures or had thick, irregular spirals with some remaining clumps. More finely structured, multi-armed galaxies like the Milky Way galaxy and its neighbor Andromeda appeared much later, when the universe was 8 billion years old.
Image credit: Image copyright Mike Taylor - Taylor Photography
Downtown Auriga
Rich in star clusters and nebulae, the ancient constellation of Auriga, the Charioteer, rides high in northern winter night skies. Spanning nearly 24 full moons (12 degrees) on the sky, this deep telescopic mosaic view recorded in January shows off some of Auriga’s most popular sights for cosmic tourists. The crowded field sweeps along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy in the direction opposite the galactic center. Need directions? Near the bottom of the frame, at the Charioteer’s boundary with Taurus the Bull, the bright bluish star Elnath is known as both Beta Tauri and Gamma Aurigae. On the far left and almost 300 light-years away, the busy, looping filaments of supernova remnant Simeis 147 cover about 150 light-years. Look toward the right to find emission nebula IC 410, significantly more distant, some 12,000 light-years away. Star forming IC 410 is famous for its embedded young star cluster, NGC 1893, and tadpole-shaped clouds of dust and gas. The Flaming Star Nebula, IC 405, is just a little farther along. Its red, convoluted clouds of glowing hydrogen gas are energized by hot O-type star AE Aurigae. Two of our galaxy’s open star clusters, Charles Messier’s M36 and M38 line up in the starfield above, familiar to many binocular-equipped skygazers.
Image credit & copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (Deep Sky Colors)
Milky Way Mosaic by Astro-Tanja | via @Flickr: http://flic.kr/p/k1JZNp
Trifid Nebula
IC 1805 - The Heart Nebula
Happy Valentine’s Day! :)
Moons on We Heart It.
Titan’s Land of Lakes
Hubble Space Telescope’s actual photos of a fricking planet 25 light years away from us, orbiting a star that you can see for yourself if you get away from city lights.
As of January 2014, NASA announced that the count of confirmed exoplanets has passed 1000,* nearly all found in the past 10 years. Most cannot be imaged directly — they’re too far away, and/or their star’s glare obscures them. There’s various indirect ways to detect exoplanets — starlight variations, a star bobbing ever so slightly from the tug of planets’ gravity — but lately, astronomers have managed to push our best telescopes to the limit and photograph a few planets in visible light (or at least infrared).
See also:
A planet coalescing around another star —a planet actually being born. THINK ABOUT THIS.
a lost planet that’s wandering through deep space
First smudgy map of an exoplanet (a gas giant)
Four planets around another star
*there’s been something like 4500 potential exoplanet candidates discovered so far, all of which appear to be likely, but which are considered “candidates” until multiple observations have detected them.
~ [xkcd… see interactive version]
As xkcd says, we live in exciting times. The Kepler Space Telescope itself spotted over 3500 potential exoplanet candidates before its gyros began to go; every month or so, another Kepler planet gets moved to its "confirmed" list.
Think about it. Until now, it was only theoretical that planets existed outside our solar system. We take alien worlds in science fiction for granted, but we didn’t know, for sure, what kinds of planets were out there, how common they were, or even if they really, truly existed.
They’re out there. An amazing variety of them. Some potentially habitable ones, a lot of crazy ones.
Want to help find them? NASA is crowdsourcing planet hunting — computers are still not as accurate as actual people scanning a light chart for dips as a planet passes in front of its star!
two have entered the space center
”Maybe! We’ll see. Hehe. Oh- My name is Yuno Gasai.”
Yuno... Gasai...? Oh-- are you visiting from Japan?
one has wandered into the space center
✮nacatl
Hey there sir-- what are you doing here so late? It's close to closing time!
two have entered the space center
I’m not too sure, actually. I’ve been ending up in weird places as of late. It’s nice to meet you, though.
Oh, is that so? Well what ever brings you here, it's for a reason! I'm Clay Terran, yourself?
two have entered the space center
✮kunshu ✮caedesism
Evening everybody, what brings you here?