Say we build a space ship, and we send people to a new world in another solar system. The distance is so great, that it’s going to take us 150 years to get there. Ten years later we invent new technology that allows us to make the same trip in only half the time. Wouldn’t we then wave out the window at the people in the first ship as we wiz by them, making the first voyage completely redundant to us?
Astronomy
Microsoft World Wide Telescope is so much more than just another On-Line app. It is a full-fledged, operating telescope that you can easily set to your own location! I’ll explain the settings. First, I’d like you to know how really versatile this interface is. Let’s start out with a picture of that.
I know the image is small and hard to distinguish so I’ll include it in a gallery of screen shots I achieved using this program (Free)… I draw your attention to the square box with the target, near the center of the picture. If you right click on any star on the screen, you will get this context box that tells you the objects magnitude, constellation, name and sometimes distance from us, as well as some selections at the bottom for a web search. Click the: “Go to object” button and you get a free 3D space ride to that object! The context menu at the bottom of the screen will then update to include nearby objects to the one you’ve selected, as well as the constellation, so you know what part of the sky you’re in. This menu can be toggled on or off via the view menu at the top of the page and reappears when you mouse over it.
The program does not come the way I’ve displayed it to you. The opening screen is filled with a lot of crap that obstructs your view of the sky: constellation lines, a center cross recital, planetary orbit lines, a big grey unnecessary control panel on your right. This too can be toggled off via the “view” and “settings” menus up top. There are 7 menu items that provide a tabbed panel when selected. Be careful to notice that each menu also has a drop down menu with additional settings; all fairly straight forward. No rocket science needed here. You can turn most of this stuff off using the menu of items displayed on your left. Pressing the big, “manage” button toggles this pane on and off as well.
You press F11 to go to full screen mode, and it is from here (after you’ve turned everything off) that you will get wonderful screen shots! I looked back at the Hubble site and found the pictures filled with color noise so bad, it’s unremovable. It never used to be this way. That’s why screen shots from this World Wide Telescope are so breath-taking and free! I got 100 good shots for just this season. there are 100 more waiting for each season, as the sky changes! Lots of fun, and they’re all as you see fit. Just hold down your mouse and drag the screen around to your liking. I’m only showing you a few shots so you can explore on your own. All these shots are 1920×1080. Use them for desktop backgrounds, or as I do; I’ll delete the background of a picture and insert the star background. There are all kinds of ways to experiment; add space ship brushes, laser brushes, exo-planets. The list of wild stuff you can do with this is endless!
If you have trouble finding some of these beauty’s in the sky, choose “search” menu and key in what you’re looking for. Eg: M1 or “The Crab Nebula”. Also, you can take tours from that menu and press the ‘esc” key to stop the tour and take a screen shot if you like. Just press F11, move your mouse cursor out of the way and press “print screen” on your key-board. Then go to a graphics editing program. Choose file/new. Make it 1920×1080 pixels. Choose edit/paste to capture your screen shot. Flatten the layers if there are any: Layer/Flatten Image (In Photoshop). Choose: “Save as” give it a name and an extension (jpg), location, and you’re good to go! Be sure and uncheck the boxes on the left panel for constellation lines, planetary orbits, asteroids etc. until your screen clears up. Easily set your location in the “settings” tab.
There’s a button on the bottom left to choose solar system, planets, sky… Choose “sky”. There’s also a tricky little button midway across the bottom that says “cross fade” on it. It won’t appear unless you’re on a tour and they’re using a super imposed Hubble picture over the background. Sliding the dial all the way to the left gets rid of that smaller picture for less intrusive screen shots… The knowledge base and usage for this app. goes far beyond extraordinary. It’s your own slew-able indoor telescope certainly valued at tens of thousands of dollars and worth its weight in gold for any true Astronomy buff, as well as user friendly operation for the novice. Wonder filled! I hope this helps you on your way to mastering this versatile and informative, eye-popping program. If you encounter any problem, Microsoft has an extensive help site, but I don’t see a problem.
The Andromeda Galaxy (/ænˈdrɒmᵻdə/), also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224, is a spiral galaxy approximately 780 kiloparsecs (2.5 million light-years) from Earth.[4] It is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way and was often referred to as the Great Andromeda Nebula in older texts. It received its name from the area of the sky in which it appears, the constellation of Andromeda, which was named after the mythological princess Andromeda. Being approximately 220,000 light years across, it is the largest galaxy of the Local Group, which also contains the Milky Way, the Triangulum Galaxy, and about 44 other smaller galaxies.
Despite earlier findings that suggested that the Milky Way contains more dark matter and could be the largest in the grouping,[12] the 2006 observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope revealed that Andromeda contains one trillion (1012) stars:[9] at least twice the number of stars in the Milky Way, which is estimated to be 200–400 billion.[13]
The Andromeda Galaxy is estimated to be 1.5×1012 solar masses,[7] while the mass of the Milky Way is estimated to be 8.5×1011 solar masses. In comparison, a 2009 study estimated that the Milky Way and M31 are about equal in mass,[14] while a 2006 study put the mass of the Milky Way at ~80% of the mass of the Andromeda Galaxy. The Milky Way and Andromeda are expected to collide in 3.75 billion years, eventually merging to form a giant elliptical galaxy [15] or perhaps a large disc galaxy.[16]
The apparent magnitude of the Andromeda Galaxy, at 3.4, is one of the brightest of any of the Messier objects,[17] making it visible to the naked eye on moonless nights even when viewed from areas with moderate light pollution. Although it appears more than six times as wide as the full moon when photographed through a larger telescope, only the brighter central region is visible to the naked eye or when viewed using binoculars or a small telescope, making it appear similar to a star.
Read more about these very peculiar objects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar
Like other neutron stars, magnetars are around 20 kilometres (12 mi) in diameter and have a mass 2-3 times that of the Sun. The density of the interior of a magnetar is such that a thimble full of its substance would have a mass of over 100 million tons.[1] Magnetars are differentiated from other neutron stars by having even stronger magnetic fields, and rotating comparatively slowly, with most magnetars completing a rotation once every one to ten seconds,[3] compared to less than one second for a typical neutron star. This magnetic field gives rise to very strong and characteristic bursts of X-rays and gamma rays. The active life of a magnetar is short. Their strong magnetic fields decay after about 10,000 years, after which activity and strong X-ray emission cease. Given the number of magnetars observable today, one estimate puts the number of inactive magnetars in the Milky Way at 30 million or more.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulum_Galaxy
The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 3 million light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. It is catalogued as Messier 33 or NGC 598, and is sometimes informally referred to as the Pinwheel Galaxy, a nickname it shares with Messier 101. The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy and about 44 other smaller galaxies. It is one of the most distant permanent objects that can be viewed with the naked eye.
The galaxy is the smallest spiral galaxy in the Local Group and it is believed to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy due to their interactions, velocities[7] and proximity to one another in the night sky. It also has an H-II nucleus.[8]
With a diameter of about 60,000 light-years, the Triangulum galaxy is the third largest member of the Local Group of galaxies. It may be a gravitationally bound companion of the Andromeda Galaxy. Triangulum may be home to 40 billion stars, compared to 400 billion for the Milky Way, and 1 trillion stars for Andromeda.[6]
NGC 604 is a H II region inside the Triangulum Galaxy. It was discovered by William Herschel on September 11, 1784. It is one of the largest H II regions in the Local Group of galaxies; at the galaxy’s estimated distance of 2.7 million light-years its longest diameter is roughly 1500 light years (460 parsecs), over 40 times the size of the visible portion of the Orion Nebula. It is over 6300 times more luminous than the Orion Nebula, and if it were at the same distance it would outshine Venus. Like all emission nebulae, its gas is ionized by a cluster of massive stars at its center.[4] with 200 stars of spectral type O and WR, a mass of 105 solar masses, and an age of 3.5 million years;[2] however, unlike the Large Magellanic Cloud‘s Tarantula Nebula central cluster (R136), NGC 604’s one is much less compact and more similar to a large stellar association, being considered the prototypical example of a Scaled OB Association (SOBA)[5]
Below: Beautiful slide show picture of M33, the only other close spiral galaxy besides Andromada; also called: ‘The Pinwheel’, a nick-name it shares with Messier 101…
The nearest star to us is actually a red dwarf in a triple star system, with two stars larger than our sun, Alpha and Beta Centauri. The red dwarf is depicted by the red circle in the photograph. To learn more about this fascinating neighbor system, follow this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri
I was watching a show about the asteroid belt on The Science Channel, when it suddenly occurred to me that reaching the nearest star: ‘Proxima Centauri’ wouldn’t be so difficult as it appears! The Asteroid belt starts approx. 300 million miles from here; just past the farthest point in Mars’s orbit.
Using space rocks for fuel
This is Ceres. It is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, with a diameter of 600 miles; more like a dwarf planet than an asteroid! An asteroid half this size would probably contain 25% water; that’s a hundred times all the fresh water on Earth! We’ve long known how to separate hydrogen from oxygen in water.
The oxygen would be useful for breathing. Some water we would drink, and some would be used as an outer skin for the star ship, to protect us from radiation. The hydrogen would be our fuel… But we’d have to shoot something deep into the asteroid to retrieve the water. A star ship making this kind of journey would have to be enormous, and rotate, to simulate earth like conditions, and artificial gravity. It will take 42 years to get where we’re going, so passengers should be young if they hope to see the place…
At the 3 billion mile mark, we have another set of rocks 250 times as large as the asteroid belt, just loaded with more fueling stations! ‘The Keiper Belt.’ At the 6 trillion mile mark, we run into: ‘The Oort cloud’, which I suspect is just more rocks to fuel up with; but they’re s0 far away, it just looks like a cloud. So we can fuel up here too!
At the other end, we have a system with two large stars, and a dwarf star. It’s ‘Oort Cloud’ probably stretches out 2 light years from the central system; that’s 3 light years worth of fillings stations then, which leaves only one light year between the two systems, which might have wandering rocks anyway. Besides, a city sized ship could process enough fusion power to take you one light year, at one tenth the speed of light; it would pass the moon in eight seconds! It would reach The Keiper belt in 30 hours! That’s incredibly fast!
Our destination
The two large stars Alpha and Beta Centauri shed far too much radiation, and tug too much upon each other to harbor planets in any reasonable orbits at all without flinging them out into space, or gobbling them up in a gravitational tug of war! Pictured above is Proxima Centauri, owning at least three planets that we know of, and assorted moons; far enough away from the influence of the other two stars! And one of them is in ‘The Goldilocks Zone’ where life may have evolved! If not? What The Heck? We gave it a shot! LOL!
IC 1101 is a staggering 1.2 billion light years away from us! This means we are seeing how the galaxy looked one billion, two hundred million years in the past. It is also the largest galaxy in the known universe! Make special note of our puny galaxy, where the arrow is pointing, its number of 100 trillion stars and diameter of 6 million light years, (one light year is 6 trillion miles). This thing is enormous! It actually reads: ‘100 trillions tars’… Did you notice the misprint?
Could there be advanced life in a galaxy with a hundred trillion stars? Not necessarily! ellipticals are a different kind of galaxy entirely from the spiral galaxy we inhabit. The problem stems from the fact that we live in-between spiral arms, where things are relatively calm.
In such a crowded galaxy as IC 1101, boulders the size of Buicks would be pummeling our planet daily; a Mount Everest sized rock every hundred years or so? Too much radiation from near-by stars as well! Life would find no chance to grab a foot-hold! Yet, perhaps around the perimeter, and that’s one colossal perimeter! Someone get me a scale so I can weigh the thing…
This is Hubble’s rendition of a smashed rock in someone’s driveway. LOL! It kind of looks like that… Globular clusters are large aggregations of stars, that are gravitation-ally bound, not ‘Big gobs of spit!’ Our galaxy contains about 150 globular clusters. It is estimated that the Andromeda galaxy may have as many as 500!
They orbit the central hub of our galaxy, and can contain a million or more stars. Since they orbit outside of our galaxy, the above photograph lies to us in the sense that some stars you see here, are just foreground stars within our own galaxy… They orbit within a zone approximately 130,000 light years from us! Here is the URL for a fascinating read on globular clusters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globular_cluster
Above, is an image of NGC 288 in the constellation ‘Sculptor’… It’s a very ancient cluster with mostly older yellow stars. The appearance of ‘a ball of stars’ is an optical illusion created by the vast distances and closer proximity of the stars to each other. If you were within the cluster you would see a lot of stars, but they would not appear in the sky as a ball… In fact, stars nearer the center are so close together as to be less than a light year apart, (about the size of our solar system). Further out, where less gravity exists, stars are further apart from one another, giving a ‘fanning out’ appearance of stars.
Starting with the above picture onward, I made these pictures in ‘Microsoft Telescope’, just by choosing to save the view to file, from the ‘View’ menu. I first turned off all the constellation lines,center courser etc. until just the image shows when you hit F-11. This is a great program, absolutely FREE from Microsoft, and will actually follow the sky in real time from your latitude, if you punch your city in… Very user friendly, with controls, or your mouse wheel if you have one, to zoom in or out.
Just upper right center is how M4 (The Messier Catalog originally representing 104 objects), can just be typed in the search field to slew you to its location. Talk about foreground stars! Bottom left, the super-giant star ‘Antares’ glares at as from the constellation ‘Scorpius’, and is a mere 550 light years away.
This star has a radius of 883 suns, yet only about 15 times the mass of our sun, so it is very lite in weight; comparable to that of a giant hot air balloon, yet burns with 10,000 times the visible luminosity of our sun, which conjures a strange image indeed! Here’s more about Antares: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antares
Enjoy the slide show I put together on Globular clusters…
Introduction:
We are living in the golden age of exoplanet discovery. One might consider rocky planets for intelligent life. Truth is, Astronomers don’t know what to expect, there’s so much data still to sift through. Even stars poor in heavy metals can support the formation of rocky planets; something once, not thought possible! So I took more of a look-see, for a simple, yet information rich page for your inspection: http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets
Not only will this article consider exoplanets, but how we will get to them! If we chose to colonize a planet double the size of The Earth for example, we’d have to reside ourselves, to the fact that we’d be a race of short dumpy looking people, because of the planet’s immense gravity! So go get your bowl of popcorn, jar of weebles, whatever you like to munch cuz we’re going to the movies!
What you’re looking at, is a failing star! Looks a lot like jupiter doesn’t it? Now it suddenly makes sense that Jupiter has a couple of moons we suspect may be supporting life! This opens up a whole new can of peas… Some planets, just like this failed star, are giant, hotter Jupiters, with perhaps hundreds of moons, a proportionately large number of its moons may support life. So don’t write an exoplanet off just because it’s a gas ball!
Above, is an Artists conception of 10 hot Jupiters; all of which, are larger than our own Jupiter. It was found that some of them had no clouds, and that these were mostly water worlds, and over-flowing with life-sustaining chemicals! There is estimated to be 33 billion exoplanets in our galaxy alone! And we know that moons are far more abundant than planets, so that raises the possibility of life filled worlds astronomically! Yet, what more is this than a bunch of useless facts if we can’t get there? Oh but we can! And we will…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/10/nasa_fusion_engine_fast_mars_trip/ Be sure and take a boo at this intriguing article about what NASA is up to right now, using fusion power. Fusion fuses atoms together, the same way our own sun is powered. Using fusion power, we can approach one tenth the speed of light. A projectile traveling that fast, would pass the moon in 8 seconds! It would reach our nearest star system, in 42 years…
Now I know that sounds like an awfully long time! Don’t forget, future technologies will assemble crafts that can surpass this speed. And there are alternatives! For example, we could just send many small probes full of our seed, and hope one finds a hospitable resting place. Or, through suspended animation, we would still age, only very slowly… Perhaps these city-sized vessels would be flying habitats, searching for planets that would only one day be inhabited by our children. Whatever the case, we’re going to the stars!
This is a chart of the range in size of earth like planets… The planet’s name and size to earth ratio are given as well. Just picture all the mind staggering possibilities that will be available within the next 50 years! A star trek like Galactic Federation may be closer than we think… One thing I would do, is flick my bic so they think me a God and give me monopoly money! Or at least set me up with a cute alien :O)
Introduction:
I thought, [If I’m going to make anything out of this series, I should start within our own galactic neighborhood, and work my way out!]. This is one of two clouds (The Large Magellanic Cloud) that orbit the hub of our galaxy perpendicular to its rotation. Here is the link that can get into all the details for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Magellanic_Cloud
Don’t go away just yet though. This article is my own condensed version for those in a hurry to visit some other galactic neighborhood of their own making. Holding roughly 10 billion solar masses. That’s roughly one tenth the size of our entire galaxy! So this little puppy, is nothing to sneeze at!
Here is a region within The LMC that is giving rapid and successive star birth! Isn’t it beautiful? This is simply one region within the cloud of many… At 160,000 light years distant, (One light year equals 6 trillion miles!) this may very well have been a captured developing ‘bar’ galaxy! And though these vast distances are practically inconceivable to the human range of understanding, it is only one of a surrounding neighbourhood of smaller clusters…
If I’m not mistaken, the end of the blue ellipse, is the end of our galaxy’s influence… As you can see, some of these ‘dwarf galaxies are within the pull of our own ‘Creamy Way’! The 100,000 light year gauge at the top might be helpful. (Check link for details.).
Hydrogen glows red, so I’m suggesting the blue is nitrogen… There are hundreds of such star forming regions throughout the LMC. It has 400 planetary nebular, 700 open star clusters, 60 globular clusters, and hundreds of thousands of giant and super giant stars! Many more details about this fascinating neighbor, via the link; be sure and link up with The Small Magellanic Cloud while you’re there! Cheers!
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