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Post by auntym on May 2, 2011 13:09:06 GMT -6
www.stumbleupon.com/su/2HhANk/www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/05/nasas-space-telescope-reveals-invisible-galaxy.htmlMay 2, 2011 "Invisible Galaxy" Revealed by Spitzer Space TelescopeMaffei 2 is the poster child for an infrared galaxy that is almost invisible to optical telescopes. Foreground dust clouds in our Milky Way galaxy block about 99.5 percent of its visible light. But this infrared image from NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope penetrates the dust to reveal the galaxy in all its beauty. The astronomer Paolo Maffei first noted the galaxy as a mysterious smudge on an infrared photographic plate in 1968. Four years later, he identified the strange object to be a galaxy, now named after him. This discovery was made in the infancy of infrared astronomy, and it would take many technological innovations in the following decades to allow astronomers to study obscured objects like this one in detail. TO CONTINUE READING CLICK ON ABOVE LINK
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Post by Deleted on May 2, 2011 13:52:22 GMT -6
I wonder what physical laws might be different in an 'infrared' galaxy..if any. Very hot I'd imagine?
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Post by auntym on May 16, 2011 15:02:08 GMT -6
www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/05/image-of-the-day-the-ufo-galaxy.htmlMay 16, 2011 Image of the Day: "The UFO Galaxy"This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the other-worldly beauty of the slender spiral galaxy NGC 5775. It reminds us a UFO straight out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Although the spiral is tilted away, with only a thin edge on view, such a perspective can be advantageous for astronomers because the regions above and below the galaxy’s disc can be seen much more clearly. Astronomers have used the high inclination of this spiral to study the properties of the halo of hot gas that is visible when the galaxy is observed at X-ray wavelengths. The mechanism behind such haloes is unclear, but they are found around spirals that have a high star formation rate, like NGC 5775. Some experts think that hot gas from the disc is driven into the halo by supernova explosions, which is then returned to the disc as it cools -- like a massive galactic fountain. TO CONTINUE READING CLICK ON ABOVE LINK
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Post by auntym on Aug 13, 2011 14:23:55 GMT -6
www.space.com/12625-colliding-galaxies-exclamation-point-photo.html Colliding Galaxies Form Exclamation Point in Space[/color] SPACE.com Staff Date: 12 August 2011 The deep space object VV 340, also known as Arp 302, is a textbook example of two colliding galaxies in a crash that will take millions of years. VV 340 is 450 million light-years from Earth. This image, released Aug. 11, 2011. CREDIT: X-ray NASA/CXC/IfA/D.Sanders et al; Optical NASA/STScI/NRAO/A.Evans et al Two bright galaxies on a cosmic collision path appear to be marking the occasion with a giant exclamation point in space. The spectacular new photo shows the galactic smash-up, called VV 340, in the early stages of collision. NASA released the cosmic crash scene and a video explaining the galaxy collision yesterday (Aug. 11). In the photo, the edge-on galaxy near the top of the image is VV 340 North and the face-on galaxy at the bottom of the image is VV 340 South. The colliding galaxies, which are also known as Arp 302,are located about 450 million light-years away from Earth. Over the course of millions of years, these two spiral galaxies will eventually merge in much the same way that the Andromeda galaxy is likely to merge with our Milky Way billions of years from now. [See the photo of the VV 340 galaxy crash] Since VV 340 shines brightly in infrared light, it is classified as a Luminous Infrared Galaxy, NASA officials said. The image of the colliding galaxies uses data from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope. The observations are part of the Great Observatories All-Sky Luminous Infrared Galaxy Survey, which combines data from Chandra, Hubble, NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) observatory, and ground-based telescopes. CONTINUE READING: www.space.com/12625-colliding-galaxies-exclamation-point-photo.html
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Post by auntym on Dec 20, 2011 12:57:51 GMT -6
www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/12/image-of-the-day-a-gigantic-shock-wave-rocks-a-galaxy-quintet.htmlDecember 19, 2011 Image of the Day: A Gigantic Shock Wave Rocks a Quintet of Galaxies Recent infrared observations made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope revealed the presence of a huge intergalactic shock wave, or "sonic boom" in the middle of Stephan's Quintet, a group of galaxies which is now the scene of a gigantic cosmic cataclysm. This discovery, made by an international research team including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg, provides a local view of what might have been going on in the early universe, when vast mergers and collisions between galaxies were commonplace. When astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope turned their attention to a well-known group of galaxies called Stephan's Quintet, they were, quite simply, shocked at what they saw. There, sweeping through the group, lurks one of the biggest shock waves ever seen. For decades, astronomers using optical telescopes have known that the galaxies in this group, located about 300 million light years away, have a very distorted distribution of visible light from stars, indicating that the galaxies have experienced encounters in the past, and are now engaged in further collisions. But this, as it turns out, is only part of the drama. Recently, astronomers have become able to measure what, apart from the stars, is present in Stephan's Quintet. By looking in the radio and X-rays they discovered huge quantities of gas -- about 100,000 million solar masses, mainly composed of hydrogen and helium -- in the space between the galaxies, more than all the gas inside the galaxies themselves. Now, a team of scientists from Caltech, USA and from the Astrophysics Department of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg, Germany, discovered that one of the galaxies, called NGC7318b, which is falling towards the others at high speed, is generating a giant shock wave in front of it -- larger even than the Milky Way -- as it ploughs its way through the intergalactic gas. The signature of the shock-wave was given by the detection of strong radiation from molecular hydrogen. When hydrogen molecules are "excited" by the mechanical energy produced in the collision and transported by shock waves, they emit a distinctive type of radiation that can be detected in the infrared, and it was this radiation that was picked up by Spitzer. The Daily Galaxy via The Max Planck Society CONTINUE READING: www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/12/image-of-the-day-a-gigantic-shock-wave-rocks-a-galaxy-quintet.html
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Post by skywalker on Dec 20, 2011 21:21:47 GMT -6
That is so cool! That's another poster I would like to hang on my wall.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 20, 2011 21:50:36 GMT -6
Amazing
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Post by Deleted on Dec 20, 2011 22:27:28 GMT -6
Does anyone else see a smiley face in there?
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Post by auntym on Jan 10, 2012 15:47:22 GMT -6
www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/01/-image-of-the-day-spectacular-galaxy-in-a-massive-bubble.htmlJanuary 09, 2012 Image of the Day: Spectacular Galaxy in a Cosmic Bubble[/color] Image Credits: R Jay Gabany (Blackbird Obs.), Collaboration: David Martinez-Delgado (MPIA, IAC), et al. Spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is olny 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation Leo. Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy sports characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars. This deep image also finds NGC 3521 embedded in gigantic bubble-like shells. The shells are likely tidal debris, streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past. MORE PICTURES: www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/01/-image-of-the-day-spectacular-galaxy-in-a-massive-bubble.html
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Post by auntym on Jan 11, 2012 12:27:07 GMT -6
www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/01/scorpius-black-hole-in-the-milky-way-erupting.htmlJanuary 11, 2012 Scorpius Black Hole in the Milky Way Erupting!Astronomers observed a black hole named H1742-322 near the galactic center, approximately 28,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius, firing off two enormous “missiles” of ionized gas at nearly a quarter the speed of light, producing as much energy in an hour as the sun emits in five years. The team used the Very Large Baseline Array — a set of 10 radio telescopes located over a range of 5,000 miles. “If your eyes were as sharp as the VLBA, you could see a person on the moon,” said physicist Gregory Sivakoff of the University of Alberta, who presented the findings Jan. 10 at the American Astronomical Society meeting. A sun-like star orbits H1743 and the black hole will periodically steal matter from its companion. This gas and dust gets incorporated into a large disk that gets slowly sucked into the black hole. Though researchers don’t understand exactly how the process works, this disk constantly emits energetic jets of plasma that spew out in opposite directions. Occasionally these jets turn off, followed shortly by an enormous burst. CONTINUE READING: www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/01/scorpius-black-hole-in-the-milky-way-erupting.html
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Post by auntym on Jan 14, 2012 12:51:13 GMT -6
www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/01/new-event-horizon-telescope-to-zoom-in-for-1st-ever-photo-of-milky-ways-supermassive-black-hole.html New 'Event-Horizon Telescope' to Zoom in for 1st Ever Photo of Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole[/color] "In essence, we are making a virtual telescope with a mirror that is as big as the Earth." Sheperd Doeleman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) On Wednesday, Jan. 18, astronomers, physicists and scientists from related fields will convene in Tucson, Ariz. from across the world to discuss an endeavor that only a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing less than impossible. The conference is organized by Dimitrios Psaltis, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, and Daniel Marrone, an assistant professor of astronomy at Steward Observatory. "Nobody has ever taken a picture of a black hole," Psaltis said. "We are going to do just that.""Even five years ago, such a proposal would not have seemed credible," added Sheperd Doeleman, assistant director of the Haystack Observatory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who is the principal investigator of the Event Horizon Telescope, as the project is dubbed. "Now we have the technological means to take a stab at it."First postulated by Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, the existence of black holes has since been supported by decades' worth of observations, measurements and experiments. But never has it been possible to directly observe and image one of these maelstroms whose sheer gravity exerts such cataclysmic power they twist and mangle the very fabric of space and time. "Black holes are the most extreme environment you can find in the universe," Doeleman said.The field of gravity around a black hole is so immense that it swallows everything in its reach; not even light can escape its grip. For that reason, black holes are just that –emitting no light whatsoever, their "nothingness" blends into the black void of the universe.So how does one take a picture of something that by definition is impossible to see?"As dust and gas swirls around the black hole before it is drawn inside, a kind of cosmic traffic jam ensues," Doeleman explained. CONTINUE READING: www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/01/new-event-horizon-telescope-to-zoom-in-for-1st-ever-photo-of-milky-ways-supermassive-black-hole.html
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Post by auntym on Jan 15, 2012 15:40:23 GMT -6
UFOTV Presents...: From Here To Andromeda Part 1 & 2
Uploaded by UFOTVstudios on Jan 13, 2012
102 minutes. From Here To Andromeda opens with the possibility that humanity may not survive due to Global Warming, an ensuing Ice Age or Mass Extinction. The question is, "Why hasn't humanity embraced sustainable technologies like Solar, Wind, and Helium-3 Fusion to beat Global Warming?" Why are the oil companies holding us hostage? Why hasn't all of humanity awakened and taken measures to ensure our survival? Find out why so many UFOs are suddenly appearing all over the world. Are they here to teach us? Are they here to help humanity make a quantum leap? What do Governments know about UFOs? Will humanity find a new home in the universe? Join UFO Researcher and Environmentalist David Sereda as he embarks on a journey in search of a way to travel to the Andromeda Galaxy 2.2 million light years away to find a new home for humanity. Along his journey he explores Sustainability, UFOs, Crop Circles, Space Propulsion Theory, Spirituality, and Human Ethics in order to solve the greatest riddle in the universe: How can one travel faster than the speed of light and go anywhere in the universe in the blink of an eye.
Features: Lockheed Martin Senior Research Engineer - Boyd Bushman, and Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University - Robert Thurman, and many more.
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Post by auntym on Apr 3, 2012 12:03:27 GMT -6
www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/04/milky-ways-rotation-its-effect-on-our-local-space-time-todays-most-popular.htmlMilky Way's Rotation --It's Effect on Our Local Space Time April 02, 2012 "The spin of our galaxy has a twisting effect on our local space that is a million times stronger than that caused by the spin of the Earth." --Dr Mark Hadley, of the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick In 2011, A University of Warwick physicist produced a galaxy sized solution which explains one of the outstanding puzzles of particle physics, while leaving the door open to the related conundrum of why different amounts of matter and antimatter seem to have survived the birth of our Universe. Physicists would like a neat universe where the laws of physics are so universal that every particle and its antiparticle behave in the same way. However in recent years experimental observations of particles known as Kaons and B Mesons have revealed significant differences in how their matter and anti matter versions decay. This “Charge Parity violation” or “CP violation” is an awkward anomaly for some researchers but is a useful phenomenon for others as it may open up a way of explaining why more matter than anti matter appears to have survived the birth of our universe. Dr Mark Hadley, of the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick, believes he has found a testable explanation for apparent Charge Parity violation that preserves parity but also makes the Charge Parity violation an even more plausible explanation for the split between matter and antimatter. Dr Hadley’s paper (just published in EPL (Europhysics Letters) and entitled “The asymmetric Kerr metric as a source of CP violation”) suggests that researchers have neglected the significant impact of the rotation of our Galaxy on the pattern of how sub atomic particles breakdown.Dr Hadley says: “Nature is fundamentally asymmetric according to the accepted views of particle physics. There is a clear left right asymmetry in weak interactions and a much smaller CP violation in Kaon systems. These have been measured but never explained. This research suggests that the experimental results in our laboratories are a consequence of galactic rotation twisting our local space time. If that is shown to be correct then nature would be fundamentally symmetric after all. This radical prediction is testable with the data that has already been collected at Cern and BaBar by looking for results that are skewed in the direction that the galaxy rotates.” CONTINUE READING: www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/04/milky-ways-rotation-its-effect-on-our-local-space-time-todays-most-popular.html
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2012 11:38:21 GMT -6
Now THAT is interesting
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Post by auntym on Sept 11, 2012 11:15:22 GMT -6
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2012 11:57:32 GMT -6
we probably are the zoo
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Post by auntym on Sept 11, 2012 22:37:50 GMT -6
HERE'S MY NAME IN THE GALAXY ZOO ;D type in your name... copy & paste & bring it over here [/color] writing.galaxyzoo.org/
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Post by lois on Sept 27, 2012 19:15:43 GMT -6
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Post by auntym on Dec 13, 2012 13:02:29 GMT -6
www.space.com/18818-andromeda-galaxy-crowdsource-study.htmlYour Help Needed to Study Andromeda Galaxyby Elizabeth Howell, SPACE.com Contributor Date: 10 December 2012 A group of astronomers is inviting the public to join their star-hunting team in a search of the bright Andromeda Galaxy. The project aims to identify star clusters in our neighboring galaxy, also known as M31. All it takes to find the clusters in Andromeda is an Internet-enabled computer and a desire to help, said Anil Seth, the team's lead investigator. "No special training is required," he said. The so-called "Andromeda Project," which began Wednesday (Dec. 5), will generate the largest sample of clusters from a single spiral galaxy when it is completed. Scientists expect the project could identify 2,500 new star clusters when finished. This would provide useful goalposts to chart how the galaxy, which is on a collision course with the Milky Way, formed and evolved. [When Galaxies Collide: Q&A on Our Milky Way's Future] "The general benefit is to better understand how spiral galaxies form," said Seth, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Utah. "Andromeda is the nearest example of a [spiral] galaxy, except for the Milky Way," he said. "We can study in detail things we can't see in larger distances." PHAT science Seth's team is using images from the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT), which will generate pictures of a third of the galaxy when the survey is completed next summer. (Getting the other two-thirds would take too much telescope time, Seth said.) The massive project is taking up two months of Hubble Space Telescope time, making it one of the largest surveys completed by the telescope. Around 20 institutions are involved with many different science goals; Seth's group has one of the projects. At first, Seth's team manually identified 600 clusters in 20 percent of the images that had been taken so far. The process took months. They aimed to automate the rest of the search using a computer program. But when the team asked the software to do the same thing, difficulties arose. Since the background of the galaxy varies behind the star clusters, this made it difficult for an automated program to do the job. "We couldn't get to the point where we could pick out a large number of clusters we identified by eye," Seth said. "There were thousands of candidates that weren’t real clusters." Around this time, the Zooniverse website caught wind of Seth's work and proposed a different approach: crowdsourcing the images. Zooniverse has several successful projects under its umbrella, including Galaxy Zoo, an effort to classify galaxies observed by Hubble and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Crowdsourcing was a new idea for most of the science team, but Seth said members enthusiastically embraced the idea. They spent half a year preparing some 12,000 images for public consumption, and hope to generate 50 to 100 views on each image by the summer of 2013. CONTINUE READING: www.space.com/18818-andromeda-galaxy-crowdsource-study.html[/color] FOR MORE INFO: www.andromedaproject.org/#
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Post by auntym on Dec 30, 2012 12:32:28 GMT -6
www.space.com/19075-m81-galaxy-is-pretty-in-pink.html?cid=dlvr.it M81 Galaxy is Pretty in Pink[/color] About this Image The perfectly picturesque spiral galaxy known as Messier 81, or M81, looks sharp in this new composite from NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes and NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. M81 is a "grand design" spiral galaxy, which means its elegant arms curl all the way down into its center. It is located about 12 million light-years away in the Ursa Major constellation and is one of the brightest galaxies that can be seen from Earth through telescopes. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2012 5:50:18 GMT -6
The galaxy in Auntym's post above (M81) is beautiful through a telescope. There is another which can be seen in the same field of view just to the right of it which is M82. I just made an observation report within the last couple of weeks regarding these on an International Astronomical site.
It's cool to see one galaxy or even two in the same fov, but it's really spectacular to see 3 or more and there are a few out there that make it possible which is just mind blowing to observe. It reminds a person just how huge this universe is .
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Post by skywalker on Dec 31, 2012 9:02:15 GMT -6
I wonder what physical laws might be different in an 'infrared' galaxy..if any. Very hot I'd imagine? I don't think the galaxy is any different from ours it just takes infrared technology to be able to see it because all the dust is blocking it from our view.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2013 13:43:51 GMT -6
Space.com Giant Gas Geysers Erupting from Milky Way Galaxyby Charles Q. Choi, SPACE.com Contributor Date: 02 January 2013 Time: 01:01 PM ET Colossal magnetized fountains of gamma-ray-emitting gas are spewing from the center of our Milky Way galaxy, researchers say. The amount of magnetic energy contained in these geyser-like outflows "corresponds to the energy liberated by about a million supernova explosions — that is a lot!" study lead author Ettore Carretti, an astrophysicist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, told SPACE.com. These outflows could help solve mysteries concerning the magnetic field of the Milky Way galaxy, Carretti added. Read More : www.space.com/19099-milky-way-galaxy-giant-geysers.html
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Post by auntym on Jan 6, 2013 19:38:53 GMT -6
Galaxies, Exoplanets & The Big Bang[/color]
Galaxies, Exoplanets & The Big Bang DiscloseTruthTVDiscloseTruthTV
Published on Jan 5, 2013
Astronomy Professor Chris Impey discussed the structure of galaxies, exoplanets, the Big Bang, and various other topics in astronomy and cosmology. Regarding the size of the universe, "the current view in the expanding Big Bang picture is that the distance to the edge...as well as we can measure, is about 40 billion light years," he said. The universe in its earliest state consisted primarily of just two elements, hydrogen and helium, and it took a long time for heavier elements to develop, he continued. An earth-like planet could have developed 6-7 billion years ago, "but I don't think we could even imagine a life-form that is a billion years more advanced than us...we don't have the evolution ourselves to imagine it," he noted.
New discoveries of exoplanets are helping to expand our knowledge of the formation of solar systems, and two systems that were recently found have a similar number of planets to ours, Impey reported. Planets are the residue of star formation, happening at the outskirts, he detailed, while our moon, it's hypothesized, may have been formed when a Mars-type object collided with a primeval Earth (moon rocks tend to support this theory). The gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn are like mini-solar systems themselves with rings and moons that probably formed around the same time.
There are around 100 million Earth-like planets in just the Milky Way alone, he estimated, and if you multiply that by the number of galaxies-- 100 billion, you have a staggering number of possibilities for life. After about a trillion years, the universe will fade to black, but interestingly, Impey suggested that "a dark universe doesn't have to be a dead universe." An intelligent species doesn't need to get their energy from starlight, but instead could tap gravitational energy, he surmised.
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Post by auntym on Jul 31, 2013 13:29:43 GMT -6
www.space.com/22177-andromeda-galaxy-photo-hsc.html?cmpid=514648Stunning New Photo of Andromeda Galaxy Taken by New High-Res Instrumentby Clara Moskowitz, SPACE.com Assistant Managing Editor July 31, 2013 This new portrait of the Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, was taken with the Subaru Telescope's new high-resolution imaging camera, the Hyper-Suprime Cam (HSC). Credit: HSC Project/NAOJ A new portrait of the Milky Way's neighbor, Andromeda, shows our twin galaxy in a whole new light thanks to a new instrument on Japan's Subaru telescope at the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea. The instrument, called the Hyper-Suprime Cam (HSC), provides sharp images of the cosmos across a wide field of view. The new photo demonstrates that the HSC camera makes good on its promise of offering his-resolution views of objects throughout the telescope's large 1.5-degree field of view. "This first image from HSC is truly exciting," Masahiro Takada, chair of the HSC science working group at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe in Japan, said in a statement. "We can now start the long-awaited, largest-ever galaxy survey for understanding the evolutionary history and fate of the expanding universe." At only 2.5 million light-years away, Andromeda, also known as M31, www.space.com/21854-andromeda-galaxy-m31-photos-gallery.html is the closest spiral galaxy to Earth, and is thought to be similar to our own galaxy. This bright galaxy is visible as a faint splotch on the sky to the naked eye, and was first written about in 964 A.D. by the Persian astronomer al-Sufi. The Subaru Telescope snapped this new image of Andromeda as part of its process to check out the HSC instrument before it is open for scientific use. [How to Find Andromeda: www.space.com/7426-starhopping-101-find-andromeda-galaxy.html ] Astronomers plan to use the HSC to take a cosmic census of every galaxy across a wide swath of sky, probing in depth to peer back through the cosmic eons. The census will record galaxy shapes for a study on how massive objects bend light through their gravitational pull in a process called gravitational lensing. www.space.com/14481-hubble-photo-brightest-galaxy-gravitational-lens.htmlCONTINUE READING: www.space.com/22177-andromeda-galaxy-photo-hsc.html?cmpid=514648#sthash.3oC7tVfE.dpuf
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Post by auntym on Jan 26, 2014 12:36:57 GMT -6
/photo/1 24 Jan 2014 Ladies and gentlemen, the Andromeda Galaxy/photo/1
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Post by auntym on Mar 11, 2014 14:21:54 GMT -6
www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2014/03/the-milky-way-and-andromeda-encircled-by-12-bright-galaxies-in-a-ring-24-million-light-years-across.html#moreMarch 11, 2014 The Milky Way and Andromeda --"Are Encircled by 12 Bright Galaxies in a Ring 24-million Light Years Across"Though it has long been known that the Milky Way and its orbiting companion Andromeda are the dominant members of a small group of galaxies, the Local Group, which is about 3 million light years across, much less was known about our immediate neighbourhood in the universe. Now, a new paper by York University Physics & Astronomy Professor Marshall McCall, published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, maps out bright galaxies within 35-million light years of the Earth, offering up an expanded picture of what lies beyond our doorstep. "All bright galaxies within 20 million light years, including us, are organized in a 'Local Sheet' 34-million light years across and only 1.5-million light years thick," says McCall. "The Milky Way and Andromeda are encircled by twelve large galaxies arranged in a ring about 24-million light years across – this 'Council of Giants' stands in gravitational judgment of the Local Group by restricting its range of influence." This is a diagram showing the brightest galaxies within 20 million light years of the Milky Way, as seen from above. The largest galaxies, here shown in yellow at different points around the dotted line, make up the "Council of Giants." McCall says twelve of the fourteen giants in the Local Sheet, including the Milky Way and Andromeda, are "spiral galaxies" which have highly flattened disks in which stars are forming. The remaining two are more puffy "elliptical galaxies", whose stellar bulks were laid down long ago. Intriguingly, the two ellipticals sit on opposite sides of the Council. Winds expelled in the earliest phases of their development might have shepherded gas towards the Local Group, thereby helping to build the disks of the Milky Way and Andromeda. CONTINUE READING: www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2014/03/the-milky-way-and-andromeda-encircled-by-12-bright-galaxies-in-a-ring-24-million-light-years-across.html#more
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Post by auntym on Mar 26, 2014 11:17:56 GMT -6
www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2014/03/cosmos-a-spacetime-odyssey-cosmic-mashup-the-merger-of-the-milky-way-and-andrtomeda-galaxies.htmlMarch 25, 2014 Collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda GalaxiesAs Neil deGrasse Tyson observed at the end of last night's Episode 3, it looks as though that in about three billion years, we'll need a new, revised Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy. According to recent research the Andromeda Galaxy may be destined to collide with the Milky Way. Andromeda, a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda is the nearest spiral galaxy to our own, the Milky Way. Andromeda and the Milky Way are approaching one another at a speed of 100 to 140 kilometers per second (62–87 miles/sec). However, this does not mean it will definitely collide with the Milky Way, since the galaxy's tangential velocity is unknown. If they do collide, the two galaxies will likely merge to form a monster elliptical galaxy. Andromeda was believed to be the largest galaxy of the Local Group of galaxies, which consists of the Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, and the Triangulum Galaxy, and about 30 other smaller galaxies. But scientists now believe that the Milky Way contains more dark matter and may be the most massive in the grouping. However, observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope revealed that Andromeda contains one trillion stars, greatly exceeding the four billion stars in our own galaxy. The wide, detailed Spitzer Space Telescope view of Andromeda at the top of the page features infrared light from dust (red) and old stars (blue). This X-ray image, made with the Chandra X-Ray Astronomy Center's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer, shows the central portion Andromeda. The Chandra X-ray Observatory is part of NASA's fleet of "Great Observatories" along with the Hubble Space Telescope. CONTINUE READING: www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2014/03/cosmos-a-spacetime-odyssey-cosmic-mashup-the-merger-of-the-milky-way-and-andrtomeda-galaxies.html
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Post by auntym on Apr 3, 2014 14:57:21 GMT -6
www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2014/04/mystery-signal-from-center-of-milky-way-does-it-come-from-dark-matter-sources.html#moreApril 03, 2014 Mystery Signal from Center of Milky Way --Does It Come from Dark Matter Sources?Our galactic center teems with gamma-ray sources, from interacting binary systems and isolated pulsars to supernova remnants and particles colliding with interstellar gas. It's also where astronomers expect to find the galaxy's highest density of dark matter, which only affects normal matter and radiation through its gravity. Large amounts of dark matter attract normal matter, forming a foundation upon which visible structures, like galaxies, are built. No one knows the true nature of dark matter, but WIMPs, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, represent a leading class of candidates. Theorists have envisioned a wide range of WIMP types, some of which may either mutually annihilate or produce an intermediate, quickly decaying particle when they collide. Both of these pathways end with the production of gamma rays -- the most energetic form of light -- at energies within the detection range of Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT). When astronomers carefully subtract all known gamma-ray sources from LAT observations of the galactic center, a patch of leftover emission remains. This excess appears most prominent at energies between 1 and 3 billion electron volts (GeV) -- roughly a billion times greater than that of visible light -- and extends outward at least 5,000 light-years from the galactic center. A new study of gamma-ray light from the center of our galaxy makes the strongest case to date that some of this emission may arise from dark matter, an unknown substance making up most of the material universe. Using publicly available data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, independent scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Chicago have developed new maps showing that the galactic center produces more high-energy gamma rays than can be explained by known sources and that this excess emission is consistent with some forms of dark matter. "The new maps allow us to analyze the excess and test whether more conventional explanations, such as the presence of undiscovered pulsars or cosmic-ray collisions on gas clouds, can account for it," said Dan Hooper, an astrophysicist at Fermilab in Batavia, Ill., and a lead author of the study. "The signal we find cannot be explained by currently proposed alternatives and is in close agreement with the predictions of very simple dark matter models." Hooper and his colleagues conclude that annihilations of dark matter particles with a mass between 31 and 40 GeV provide a remarkable fit for the excess based on its gamma-ray spectrum, its symmetry around the galactic center, and its overall brightness. Writing in a paper submitted to the journal Physical Review D, the researchers say that these features are difficult to reconcile with other explanations proposed so far, although they note that plausible alternatives not requiring dark matter may yet materialize. "Dark matter in this mass range can be probed by direct detection and by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), so if this is dark matter, we're already learning about its interactions from the lack of detection so far," said co-author Tracy Slatyer, a theoretical physicist at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. "This is a very exciting signal, and while the case is not yet closed, in the future we might well look back and say this was where we saw dark matter annihilation for the first time." The researchers caution that it will take multiple sightings – in other astronomical objects, the LHC or in some of the direct-detection experiments now being conducted around the world -- to validate their dark matter interpretation. CONTINUE READING: www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2014/04/mystery-signal-from-center-of-milky-way-does-it-come-from-dark-matter-sources.html#more
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Post by auntym on Apr 17, 2014 14:11:58 GMT -6
www.space.com/25522-sombrero-galaxy.html?cmpid=514648_20140417_22094484Sombrero Galaxy: Hidden Double in a HatBy Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor April 16, 2014 One of the first images taken by the Discovery Channel Telescope was of the Sombrero Galaxy, M104. The image was obtained April-May 2012. Credit: Lowell Observatory View full size image The Sombrero Galaxy, also called M104 or NGC 4594, is about 28 million light-years from our planet in the constellation Virgo. It is so named because the halo surrounding its disc is unusually large, making it look like a sombrero. "Close inspection of the central bulge shows many points of light that are actually globular clusters. M104's spectacular dust rings harbor many younger and brighter stars, and show intricate details astronomers don't yet fully understand," stated the NASA website Astronomy Picture Of The Day in a July 2013 entry. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130715.htmlExamination of the galaxy in recent years revealed that it had a sort of "split personality," NASA said on another website, showing that is a large elliptical galaxy that has a disk galaxy embedded inside of it. The reason this happened is still poorly understood. Three discoverers?It's unclear exactly who discovered the galaxy — Pierre Mechain or Charles Messier. Also, William Herschel found the object independently in 1784, even though it had already been discovered by others. Messier was compiling a list of objects that are not comets in the sky — he was an avid comet-hunter frustrated by false sightings through looking at galaxies and nebulas. Now known as the Messier catalog, the original set of objects did not include what is now known as M104. Messier, however, wrote about the galaxy on May 11, 1781, in his own copy of the catalog, according to the European Southern Observatory. Mechain, who also surveyed deep-sky objects, mentioned he had found the galaxy in a letter dated May 1783, while Herschel — who is perhaps best known for discovering the planet Uranus — tracked down this object independently in May 1784. Herschel also remarked on a dust lane surrounding the galaxy, making him the likely first person to observe it. He was using a bigger telescope than Messier, ESO stated, so that was why he was able to see it. CONTINUE READING: www.space.com/25522-sombrero-galaxy.html?cmpid=514648_20140417_22094484
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