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Sub-Topics
2006
MaterialsMultimedia
- Drawings and Photos of Galaxies and Space (Christian Science Monitor)
Provides drawings and pictures. 07-10
- Earth from Far, Far Away and Very, Very Close (Florida State University - Davidson)
"View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons."
- Local Group (Wikipedia.org)
"The Local Group is the group of galaxies that includes our galaxy, the Milky Way. The group comprises about 30 galaxies (including dwarf galaxies), with its gravitational center located somewhere between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy." 10-09
- M81 (Bode's) Galaxy (MSNBC News)
"This beautiful galaxy is tilted at an oblique angle on to our line of sight, giving a "birds-eye view" of the spiral structure. The galaxy is similar to our Milky Way, but our favorable view provides a better picture of the typical architecture of spiral galaxies. Though the galaxy is 11.6 million light-years away, NASA Hubble Space Telescope's view is so sharp that it can resolve individual stars, along with open star clusters, globular star clusters, and even glowing regions of fluorescent gas." 05-07
- Photos of Galaxies (MSNBC News)
Provides pictures. 04-10
- Photos of Galaxies (TeacherCertification.org)
Provides pictures. 04-10
Papers
- Pictures and Sounds of Galaxies (CosmicLog.msnbc.msn.com)
"Help yourself to the biggest pictures and the coolest sounds from space." 06-08
- -Space Agency to Measure and Map the Milky Way (Forbes.com)
"A mission by the European Space Agency to measure and map the Milky Way promises to give astronomers a precise, detailed, and three-dimensional view of our galaxy. The five-year project will generate more than a petabyte of data on the makeup, position, motion, and other characteristics of a billion stars."
'It will single handedly increase the data we possess about where stars are located in space by thousands of times compared to all previous such measurements in history,' writes the Boston Globe." 04-15
- A Supersun Is Born in the Milky Way (Science.Time.com)
"The most common stars in the Milky Way by far are runty M-dwarfs only half as big as the Sun but eight times as numerous. The galaxy does have a few massive stars floating around, but not many: only one in 10,000 stars measures up to the generation of giants that lived and died so long ago."
"That being the case, a new paper under submission to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics is especially intriguing: using the Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array telescope (ALMA), which was formally dedicated just four months ago, astronomers have caught one of these nearly extinct monsters in the act of formation, deep within a cloud of cold gas and dust floating some 11,000 light-years from Earth. 'Not only are these stars rare,' said co-author Gary Fuller, of the U.K.s University of Manchester, in a press statement, 'but their birth is extremely rapid and their childhood is short, so finding such a massive object so early in its evolution is a spectacular result.' " 07-13
- Andromeda Galaxy (Wikipedia.org)
"The Andromeda Galaxy (also known as Messier Object 31, M31, or NGC 224) is a giant spiral galaxy in the Local Group, together with the Milky Way galaxy." 10-04
- Andromeda Galaxy Way Bigger Than Thought (CNN News)
"The discovery of several large, metal-poor stars located far from the center of the Andromeda galaxy suggests our nearest galactic neighbor might be up to five times larger than previously thought."
" 'We're typically used to thinking of Andromeda as this tiny speck of light, but the actual size of the halo...extends to a very large radius and it actually fills a substantial portion of the night sky,' said study team member Jason Kalirai of the University of California, Santa Cruz." 01-07
- Astronomical Distances (Wikipedia.org)
"The parsec (symbol pc) is a unit of length used in astronomy. It stands for 'parallax of one arc second'."
"One parsec is defined to be the distance from the Earth to a star that has a parallax of 1 arcsecond. It is, therefore, approximately:...3.261630751 light years."
"One kiloparsec, abbreviated 'kpc', is one thousand parsecs, or 3,262 light years. Kiloparsecs are typically used to measure distances between parts of a galaxy."
"One megaparsec, abbreviated 'Mpc', is one million parsecs, or 3,261,564 light years. Megaparsecs are typically used to measure distances between neighboring galaxies and galaxy clusters."
"One gigaparsec, abbreviation 'Gpc', is one billion parsecs one of the largest distance measures used. One gigaparsec equals 3.261564 billion light years, or roughly Ό the distance to the horizon of the observable universe (dictated by the cosmic background radiation). Gigaparsecs are typically used to measure distances to supergalactic structures, such as clusters of quasars or the Great Wall." 01-07
- Close Encounter With a Cluster (CosmicLog.com)
"If galaxies are your thing, you simply have to zoom in on the Hubble Space Telescope's latest picture of the Coma Cluster, one of the densest collections of galaxies found to date." 06-08
- Collision of Galaxies Seen Through "Galactic Lens" (CBS News)
"From the far reaches of space, astronomers brought two colliding galaxies into sharp focus by patching together images from several powerful telescopes. That, and the luck of a rare 'galactic lens.' "
"A giant, heavy object bends light from objects behind it due to its strong gravity - an effect called gravitational lensing. Astronomers can study objects through such a cosmic magnifying glass that would otherwise be invisible. But for a gravitational lens to work, the foreground lensing object - in this case a galaxy - and the one beyond it need to be precisely aligned."
"That's what happened in this rare instance."
- Galaxies (Wikipedia.org)
"A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an unknown dark matter." 01-07
- Galaxies Collide with a Stellar Bang (CNN News)
"Astronomers have found what they are calling the perfect cosmic storm, a galaxy cluster pile-up so powerful its energy output is second only to the Big Bang."
"The cluster collision is the most powerful ever recorded and a fresh glimpse of the cluster merging process, where great swarms of galaxies smash into one another to form a single galactic structure."
"Researchers said the Abell 754 observations match closely with those predicted by computer models and are a sign that astronomers are on the right track with theories of galactic evolution and the structure of the universe."
"NASA researcher Richard Mushotzky, U.S. project scientist for the XMM-Newton observatory, told reporters that the research also adds to the understanding of dark matter and dark energy, two invisible phenomena that can determine the rate of merging galactic clusters."
" 'In some ways, galaxy clusters are the universe in a box,' Mushotzky said. 'If we can understand them with some detail, we can apply those findings to the universe as a whole." 9-04
- Galaxies Topics (Wikipedia.org)
Provides a table of contents on galaxies. 01-07
- Galaxy Blasted by a Black Hole (MSNBC News)
"A powerful jet of particles from a "supermassive" black hole has been seen blasting a nearby galaxy, according to findings from the US space agency." 12-07
- Galaxy Collisions (Space.com)
"An intergalactic traffic jam formed by galaxies crashing together takes center stage in a new image of the well-known Hercules galaxy cluster." 03-12
- Galaxy Shines With the Light of 300 Trillion Suns (PBS.org)
"In a galaxy far, far away specifically 12.5 billion [light] years from Earth shines the light of more than 300 trillion suns. NASAs space telescope Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, WISE, recently discovered the galaxy the brightest one ever found."
"NASA said the galaxy belongs to a new class of objects called ELIRGs, or extremely luminous infrared galaxies, and scientists believe that a black hole inside the galaxy could be the cause of the bright light." 05-15
- Groups and Clusters of Galaxies (Wikipedia.org)
"Galaxy groups and clusters are super-structures in the spread of galaxies of the cosmos. Matter throughout the visible Universe has, over the course of the Universe's history, aggregated into a range of large-scale structures under the influence of gravity. Groups and clusters may contain from ten to thousands of galaxies. The clusters themselves are involved in larger groups called superclusters." 10-04
- Hubble Finds Most Distant Galaxies (CNN)
Includes a picture of galaxies believed to be 95 percent back to the time when the universe began, using an infrared camera.
- Hubble Photographs Early Galaxies at Birth (USA Today)
"Hubble astronomers unveiled a panoramic view Tuesday of the universe's youngest galaxies, offering the earliest look yet at the puny predecessors to our own Milky Way."
"Galaxies are the islands of stars filling the cosmos. Large ones such as our own Milky Way galaxy span more than 100,000 light-years (nearly 600,000 trillion miles) and contain hundreds of billions of stars."
"The few faint earliest galaxies that emerge from the survey of about 7,500 galaxies are much smaller and filled with young, massive stars. They shine from only 600 million to 800 million years after the Big Bang, which took place about 13.7 billion years ago." 01-10
- Hubble Sequence (Wikipedia.org)
"The Hubble sequence is a classification of galaxy types developed by Edwin Hubble in 1936. It is also called the tuning-fork diagram as a result of the shape of its graphical representation." 10-04
- Hubble's Deepest Look into Space (HuffingtonPost.com)
"NASA calls it the most colorful image ever captured by the Hubble Space Telescope--and the most comprehensive. It has to be one of the most spectacular." 06-14
- Most Distant (Known) Galaxy (MSNBC News)
"Astronomers have confirmed that an incredibly faint galaxy in the constellation Fornax is the most distant known object in the universe, shining more than 13 billion light-years away and reflecting an era when stars were just beginning to emerge from a cosmic fog." 10-10
- Motion of Matter at the Center of a Galaxy Filmed (Nature - Clarke)
Provides the first animation of the movement of matter at the center of a galaxy. 3-02
- Nearby Galaxy Looks Like Ours (Time.com)
"Nearby galaxy NGC 6744 is similar to the Milky Way, making this image look like a picture postcard of our own galaxy sent from extragalactic space."06-11
- Oldest Galaxy Ever Found (Time.com)
"The newly discovered star cluster a hundred times smaller than our own Milky Way was formed just 480 million years after the 13.7 billion year-old universe itself was born, making it easily the oldest galaxy ever found." 01-11
- One Galactic Year (LiveScience.com)
"Humans are used to keeping time by measuring Earth's movement relative to the sun. But while Earth's trips around its star are noteworthy to life on our pale blue dot, that journey is pretty insignificant when compared with the epic voyage that carries the sun and our entire solar system around the center of the Milky Way."
"Orbiting the Milky Way galaxy just once takes the sun approximately 220 million to 230 million Earth years, according to Keith Hawkins, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin."
- Our Galaxy - Age of Galaxy Finally Estimated (BBC News)
"A team working with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile report that our galaxy is 13,600 million years old, give or take 800 million years. The observations were made by measuring the content of the element beryllium in two stars contained in a so-called globular cluster in our galaxy. The beryllium content of stars rises with time, so it can be used as a 'cosmic clock' to calculate their ages." 8-04
- Our Galaxy - From the Outside (BBC News)
"This [picture] is our home galaxy as it might look if you could travel outside it and look back." 8-04
- Our Galaxy Has a Black Hole in the Center (BBC News)
"There now seems little doubt that a supermassive black hole resides at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way." 8-04
- Questions About Galaxies (ASK and Astronomer for Kids)
Provides questions and answers for kids and adults. 01-06
- Stars (Wikipedia.org)
"A star is any massive gaseous celestial body in outer space. Stars appear as shining points in the nighttime sky that twinkle because of the effect of the Earth's atmosphere and their distance from us. The Sun is an exception: it is the only star sufficiently close to Earth to appear as a disc and to provide daylight." 10-04
- Study: Milky Way Galaxy Has Four Arms, Not Two (Science.Time.com)
"Astronomers in the U.K. have counted not two but four arms swirling out from the center of the Milky Way." 12-13
- Study: Our Galaxy Will Merge With Andromeda Galaxy (CNN News)
"New data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope proves, NASA says, that in 4 billion years the Milky Way and Andromeda will collide or pass each other by so closely that the gravitational force each exerts on the other will cause them to slow down to the point of merging. The merger will be completed 6 billion years from now." 06-12
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