Spiral Galaxy  
 
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The Milky Way as seen from Earth
The Milky Way as seen from Earth

 

Milky Way Galaxy


If we could view our Galaxy from outside and above this is what it would look like. Note the position of our Sun. New measurements of how quickly our Galaxy is rotating have led a team of Harvard astrophysicists to conclude that our Galaxy is 50 percent more massive than previously thought, and likely does have four arms.What is more, it is moving 15% faster than earlier predictions.

 


Andromeda Galaxy close up
Hubble close up view of the Andromeda Galaxy

My local Astronomy group

 



Andromeda Galaxy
Our nearest neighbor the Andromeda Galaxy with a few other neighborhood Galaxies.

 

Heavenly shperes drawing
It wasn't all that long ago that the Earth was seen as the whole Universe

 

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The higher mass of our Galaxy makes for a higher gravitational pull, suggesting that collisions with Andromeda and other nearby Galaxies may happen much sooner than thought - but still billions of years in the future.

 

Voyager 1 Spacecraft
Voyager Spacecraft

Voyagers launch window in 1977-79 happens only once every 176 years, so that a single spacecraft can fly by all four planets. If this window had occurred in 1965-66-67, we wouldn't have had the technology to fly such a mission. If it had happened in the 80's, we couldn't have launched the mission because the Titan/Centar rocket was discontinued. NASA were indeed fortunate that the launch window was open at just the right time. Both Voyagers have enough electrical power to keep it going for roughly another 20 years. There's still a lot left to discover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The word 'Galaxy' comes from the Greek, made up of 'gala' (milk) and 'cyclos' (cycle).

Greek mythology offers one of the earliest explanations of the origin of the Milky Way.When the Goddess Here was nursing Hercules, some of her milk escaped and sprayed as a milky band across the skies.

Scientific estimates say that there are billions of Galaxies all of various shapes and sizes. The system in which the Milky Way belongs to is known as 'the local group'. In this system there are approximately 30 other Galaxies. The largest and most well known of these is Andromeda. A large spiral Galaxy similar to the Milky Way. It is about 2.3 million light years from Earth and contains about 400 billion stars.

 

The third spiral Galaxy in our local group, M33, is the smallest of the spirals. It is close to the Andromeda Galaxy and is thought to orbit it. The closest known neighboring Galaxies are the Magellanic Clouds, named after the famous explorer who first spotted them in 1521. In the 'clouds' are two irregular Galaxies, one larger, the Large Magellanic Cloud, containing about 10 billion stars. The other is smaller and farther away: the Small Magellanic Cloud. These two Galaxies actually orbit our own Milky Way Galaxy.

 

The total number of Stars in our Milky Way is estimated at 200 - 400 billion, but some astronomers believe that even that figure should be doubled. The numbers are just too huge to comprehend.


To quote Carl SaganCarl Sagan
"Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth.
Each of those worlds is as real as ours, and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future.
Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time.
And on our small planet at this moment, here, we face a critical branch point in history.
What we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well".
Quote taken from 'Cosmos- A personal Voyage: Episode 8: Journeys in Space and Time.

 

Compact Galaxies
This discovery of Compact Galaxies answer one question, according to received opinion the original building blocks of the Universe are small dwarf Galaxies of low mass, many of which must still be in existence even today.
However, up to the present astronomers have always found far fewer dwarf Galaxies than the cosmological models predicted. Researchers now believe that the ultra-compact Galaxies may have originated from dwarf Galaxies which have lost their peripheral Stars. Computer simulations by Dr. Kenji Bekki (Sydney, Australia) also confirm that this is possible. The new type of Galaxy is thus an important link which might explain the discrepancy between observations and the cosmological models.

The Galaxies in our Universe are not all the same: there are spirals which resemble our own Milky Way, large elliptical's and small low-luminosity Galaxies.
Astronomers have always wondered whether some types of Galaxies may have been overlooked in previous observations. By making a large-scale spectroscopic checkout of all objects in the relatively close Fornax Galaxy Cluster the team of astronomers are now actually able to track down a new type: what is known as the ultra-compact Galaxies lying in the center of Galaxy clusters. Because of their very small extension in the sky the ultra-compact Galaxies had previously been considered to be Stars of the Milky Way. However, their radial velocity ( a coarse way of measuring distance ) revealed to the astronomers that they could not be in our Milky Way.

 

Voyager 1 and 2

The twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft continue exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. In the 25th year after their 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from Earth and the Sun than Pluto is, and approaching the boundary region -- the heliopause -- where the Sun's dominance of the environment ends and interstellar space begins.Both spacecraft are speeding outward at more than 17 kilometers per second (38,000 miles per hour), and are still sending scientific information about their surroundings through the Deep Space Network (DSN).

The primary mission of the twin Voyagers was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. After making a string of discoveries there -- such as active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io and intricacies of Saturn's rings -- the mission was extended. Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer planets. The adventurers' current mission, the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), will explore the outermost edge of the Sun's domain...and beyond

 

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Compact Gallaxy and Milky Way
Milky Way & Compact Galaxy comparison

 

This illustration compares the Milky Way with a compact Galaxy in the early Universe.
Looking almost 11 billion years into the past, astronomers have measured the motions of Stars for the first time in a very distant Galaxy. They are whirling at a speed of 1 million miles per hour--about twice the speed of our Sun through the Milky Way. The Galaxies are a fraction the size of our Milky Way, and so may have evolved over billions of years into the full-grown Galaxies seen around us today.

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An international team of astronomers may have set a new record in discovering what is the most distant known Galaxy in the Universe. Located an estimated 13 billion light-years away, the object is being viewed at a time only 750 million years after the big bang, when the universe was barely 5 % of its current age.

 

Hubble deep field
Hubble Deep Space image


Point the Hubble Space Telescope to a tiny seemly empty patch of sky and this is what it finds: thousands of distant Galaxies, remnants of the Big Bang, receding into space .
Gravity binds Stars together into Galaxies.
It also binds Galaxies into local groups of Galaxies.
Groups of Galaxies into .
And clusters into super-clusters.
The number of Stars in the Universe boggles even the brainiest Scientific minds.

 

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When Galaxies were first discovered they were called Island Universe's because they looked like islands of Stars in a dark sea.

 

first image of the Earth and Moon as seen from Vayager Spacecraft

In September 1977, Voyager 1's camera looked back toward the home planet for a first-ever glimpse of the Earth and its Moon in a single frame.

 

Voyagers gold plated disc
Voyagers Gold plated disc.

The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record-a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played.

Virgin Galactic put out a call for pilot-astronaut applicants this week, as the company ramps up to offer tourism flights into space. Virgin is ready to select three candidates, one to start now and the others to come on board as needed. The pilots will participate in the ongoing test-flight program for WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo in Mojave and later will help launch commercial operations and train new pilots at Spaceport America in New Mexico. Virgin is looking for graduates of test-pilot school with experience flying high-performance jets and large multi-engine aircraft as well as "low lift-to-drag ratio glide experience (e.g. simulated flameout landings) in complex aircraft." Their ideal candidate would have spaceflight experience as well -- a criterion that might not be so hard to meet as NASA winds down its shuttle program, leaving their astronaut corps grounded.

Essential qualifications for the pilot-astronauts include an FAA commercial certificate and a current medical, a degree in a relevant field, and at least 3,000 hours of flight experience. Pilots will also need good communication skills as they will be helping to train passengers to participate in space flight. In its posting, Virgin emphasized that the space program is not just a lark, but an important part of the company's future. "It will remain a very high profile part of the Virgin Group and has the potential to become its global, flagship company," according to the Web site. For more details about Virgin Galactic's job posting or to apply, click here.