Astronomy Question

[sr71blackbird]

We are in one of the arms of the Milky Way galaxy, that is suppose to look something like this:

http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/Images/StarChild/universe_level2/andromeda_big.gif


The question is, if the center of the galaxy has a large bulge of glowing material (stars? gasses?) why can't we SEE this when we look up at night?

[cupcakelove]

Because its way too far away. Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_way)'s a little bit from a wiki article on our galaxy. I added the bold.

The term "milky" originates from the hazy band of white light appearing across the celestial sphere visible from Earth, which comprises stars and other material lying within the galactic plane. The galaxy appears brightest in the direction of Sagittarius, towards the galactic center. Relative to the celestial equator, the Milky Way passes as far north as the constellation of Cassiopeia and as far south as the constellation of Crux, indicating the high inclination of Earth's equatorial plane and the plane of the ecliptic relative to the galactic plane. The fact that the Milky Way divides the night sky into two roughly equal hemispheres indicates that the solar system lies close to the galactic plane. The Milky Way's visual absolute magnitude is −20.9[8]

[sr71blackbird]

Certainly the galaxy pictured is further away than our own galactic center, wouldnt you agree? It cannot be that the galaxy center is too far away to be visible...

The galaxy in the picture is Andromeda, which is the closest galaxy to our galaxy... Why can we see theirs if we cannot see ours?

[Bill From Yorktown]

a lot of dust and other obsuring material between us and them. On top of that, light polution actually obscures the milky way - try travelling several hundred miles away from a major city - you can see a LOT more of the milky way. It's there, just dim

[JPMNICK]

actually I think the center of the milky way is a black hole. The really white stuff is matter that is being superheated as it is spinning towards its ultimate demise.

[topless_mike]

really want to get a headache thinking astronomical?

ok- take the big bang theory.
all of everything we know was a big ball that went boom (goes the dynamite).
if we, on planet earf, are floating in the universe, what was this "ball" floating in that went boom?

[JPMNICK]

really want to get a headache thinking astronomical?

ok- take the big bang theory.
all of everything we know was a big ball that went boom (goes the dynamite).
if we, on planet earf, are floating in the universe, what was this "ball" floating in that went boom?

from what I learned in college, it was floating in pudding.

actually if you really want to think of something crazy, in most of space there is only 1 atom per several square MILES

[patsopinion]

its all propaganda
we don't know shit about the universe
last time we learned something about space was sputnik

[topless_mike]

i hate to hijack, but this rocks

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic226482dv0ng.jpg
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic238050yl7mp.jpg
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic158908ek2cd.jpg
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic067297bs4ui.jpg

[furie]

really want to get a headache thinking astronomical?

ok- take the big bang theory.
all of everything we know was a big ball that went boom (goes the dynamite).
if we, on planet earf, are floating in the universe, what was this "ball" floating in that went boom?

we're not floating in the universe, we're in a vacuum. just as before the big bang everything was a vacuous void.

[sr71blackbird]

I am still not fully satisfied. I think we need Mike the Teacher's explanation.

[jennysmurf]

you can see the milky way really well at my parents' house in kentucky. it's wombo cool. and genesis says nothing about us floating in pudding--i looked it up.

[weekapaugjz]

you can see the milky way really well at my parents' house in kentucky. it's wombo cool. and genesis says nothing about us floating in pudding--i looked it up.

so like earl, do you believe baby dinosaurs were on noah's ark?

[Fat_Sunny]

i hate to hijack, but this rocks

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic226482dv0ng.jpg
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic238050yl7mp.jpg
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic158908ek2cd.jpg
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic067297bs4ui.jpg

That Series Of Pictures Is Just Amazing. It Takes Something Visual Like That To Even Begin To Comprehend The Sizes Involved.


it's wombo cool

Now THAT'S A Great Expression, JS !

[sr71blackbird]

I found a site that may give me a clue.. (http://www.astropix.com/HTML/D_SUM_S/MILKYWAY.HTM)

Here is a picture of the night sky, showing it. I am not sure why we cannot see it like this here, unless light pollution is to blame..

http://www.astropix.com/IMAGES/D_SUM_S/MILKYWAY.JPG

Does the sky look anything like this where YOU are?

[jennysmurf]

so like earl, do you believe baby dinosaurs were on noah's ark?

nah, they stepped on noah's pet labradoodle, so he threw them to the curb. i think it's in chapter 9.

[jennysmurf]

That Series Of Pictures Is Just Amazing. It Takes Something Visual Like That To Even Begin To Comprehend The Sizes Involved.




Now THAT'S A Great Expression, JS !

i try. thanks for noticing.

[sr71blackbird]

Yes, those relative planet and sun sizes thing is awesome. It kind of scares the hell out of me too for some reason! We are NOTHING!!!

[weekapaugjz]

nah, they stepped on noah's pet labradoodle, so he threw them to the curb. i think it's in chapter 9.

i miss labradoodles...

[Judge Smails]

Here's everything you need to know (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JSR_6qfXTg&mode=related&search=)

[weekapaugjz]

I found a site that may give me a clue.. (http://www.astropix.com/HTML/D_SUM_S/MILKYWAY.HTM)

Here is a picture of the night sky, showing it. I am not sure why we cannot see it like this here, unless light pollution is to blame..

http://www.astropix.com/IMAGES/D_SUM_S/MILKYWAY.JPG

Does the sky look anything like this where YOU are?

light pollution has a lot to do with it, but i have never seen it look like that.

my mom's house is in the middle of the country in southwestern new york. i have never seen the stars as bright as they are there (im sure many places it is much better though).

i admit my nerd card holder status in the fact i will roam out into the fields with a starmap, binocs, and a flashlight and look at the stars for hours.

[Fat_Sunny]

Yes, those relative planet and sun sizes thing is awesome. It kind of scares the hell out of me too for some reason! We are NOTHING!!!


It's Funny...F_S Felt Just The Opposite Seeing That. Antares Must Be A Billion Times Bigger Than The Earth, And Yet It Just Sits There Red And Hot Doing Nothing Other Than Just Existing. But We Can Sit Here And Think And Talk And Be Geniuses And Jerks And Create And Destroy, So SR71 And F_S Are Better Than Antares!

[Fat_Sunny]

i admit my nerd card holder status in the fact i will roam out into the fields with a starmap, binocs, and a flashlight and look at the stars for hours.

Do You Try To See If The Light From The Flashlight Will Hit The Moon?

[torker]

That Series Of Pictures Is Just Amazing. It Takes Something Visual Like That To Even Begin To Comprehend The Sizes Involved.
http://gfx1.gamelink.com/GLImages/addimages/john_holmes.jpg

[jennysmurf]

It's Funny...F_S Felt Just The Opposite Seeing That. Antares Must Be A Billion Times Bigger Than The Earth, And Yet It Just Sits There Red And Hot Doing Nothing Other Than Just Existing. But We Can Sit Here And Think And Talk And Be Geniuses And Jerks And Create And Destroy, So SR71 And F_S Are Better Than Antares!

dude...that's way deep.

[weekapaugjz]

Do You Try To See If The Light From The Flashlight Will Hit The Moon?

no, its for when i have to check the star maps while pushing my glasses into place [nerd slurp]

[Fat_Sunny]

dude...that's way deep.

Fortunately, Torker Lightened Things Up In Just The Right Way!!!

[jennysmurf]

no, its for when i have to check the star maps while pushing my glasses into place [nerd slurp]

try stapling your glasses to your forehead, that's what i do. then they won't slip. there'll be a little blood, but don't be a sissy about it.

[torker]

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic067297bs4ui.jpg
Brian Regan is a liar!

[Devo37]

I think <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JSR_6qfXTg" target="_blank">this</a> will answer all of your astronomy questions.

[weekapaugjz]

I think <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JSR_6qfXTg" target="_blank">this</a> will answer all of your astronomy questions.

it was funnier when smails posted it...

[Devo37]

it was funnier when smails posted it...

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c395/Devo37/doh.jpg

[SinA]

because the bible says so

[Mike Teacher]

Great Qs

Quick answer is we can see it, but as mentioned, much is obscured by dust, and combining that w/ light pollution, it's tough to see, but looking at the Milky Way at night, that thin band in the sky, is looking at the arm, and towards the center. Dust lanes obscure the view in many directions, hence the dark lanes in the pics of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy above. Distance has nada to do with that. We can see bright spots, and dark lanes of dust, and that collection of stars is a bit more then 2 million light years away.

You haveta remember that were in the forest so the trees are gonna look a lot different then said collection. So we dont see the large scale structure like you see above. You can see M31 on a good night if you know where to look, but it's just a smudge of light. Said smudge is the collective light of a hundred billion or so stars 2 million light years away, so thats pretty cool.

=

As for the Big Bang Boom mentioned, the term 'Bang' suggests an explosion, and there wasnt any. The Big Bang was a tremendous expansion of space-time itself. In an explosion, something expands into space, this was the expansion of space itself; it wasnt expanding 'into' anything, at least thats outside the sphere of cosmology at this point.

=

Those scale models of the planets are cool, sadly they cant really be shown to true scale, at least not on a small screen. To get, for example; the Earth/Moon right in Both scale and size; if you had a Earth globe one foot wide, the moon would be about 5 inches across, but 30 feet away. Thats a whole lotta empty space, and that's just between Earth and Moon. Wow i hope those top-o-head numbers are right. In short the moon is about 30 earth diameters [8,000 miles] away [~240,000 miles].

Here's some distance I remember. The moon, at light travel speed, is about a second and a half away. At 186,000 miles per second it takes about 1.5 secs to go 240,000. ANyway thats Nothing, the Sun is something like 8 Light Minutes Away, the nearest star after that 4 light years away, and Andromeda, which is Close By, is 2 million light years out.

=

In terms of our importance, centrality and dominion in this universe, Astronomy is the history of the Great Demotions.

[weekapaugjz]

Dust lanes obscure the view in many directions, hence the dark lanes in the pics of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy above. Distance has nada to do with that. We can see bright spots, and dark lanes of dust, and that collection of stars is a bit more then 2 million light years away.


thanks mike! your posts always enlighten everyone.

M31 is one of my favorite things to look at in the sky. too bad im stuck with a pair of binocs and can't afford a good telescope...

[Mike Teacher]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention we arent near the galactic center where things look important, or at least well-lit, but were tucked away in some lost corner of an outer arm. Galactic boondocks. Hayseeds of the Heavens.

Another demotion.

[sr71blackbird]

In a way Mike, I think we are fortunate to be where we are in the galaxy. I cannot imagine how the night sky would look if we were nearer the galactic core! I bet it would be so dense with starts and stuff that it would be all illumination no matter where you looked. I think we are in a good spot to be able to see our own and others outside our own. Our location probably helped science along! I just wish that I could see the night sky like the way I have it posted above.

[Furtherman]

It kind of scares the hell out of me too for some reason! We are NOTHING!!!

Exactly.

AND then there is the fact that there IS nothing:

The universe has a huge hole in it that dwarfs anything else of its kind. The discovery caught astronomers by surprise. (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070823_huge_hole.html)

The hole is nearly a billion light-years across. It is not a black hole, which is a small sphere of densely packed matter. Rather, this one is mostly devoid of stars, gas and other normal matter, and it's also strangely empty of the mysterious "dark matter" that permeates the cosmos. Other space voids have been found before, but nothing on this scale.

A billion light years across... of nothing.

That is scary. Imagine, sitting in your spacecraft, on the edge of that void.

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Wrap your head around that one Earthlings!

It's wonders like this that really put into perspective how unimportant so many of our squabbles are.

[JPMNICK]

the sheer size of space is SOOOO hard to comprehend. just to think about a billion light years is amazing.

at the speed of light, it still take a fucking billion years to cross it. imagine what shape the earth was in a billion years ago, and just think about that for a second.

[Furtherman]

A billion years ago there was only algae and fungi on Earth. The primordial soup from which we came.

[Crispy123]

Exactly.

AND then there is the fact that there IS nothing:



The Nothing is coming

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b364/Lyke_oh_my_goth/neverendingstory.jpg

[Chigworthy]

Furtherman, I just read that Nietzsche quote yesterday in "The Descent" by Jeff Long. Coincedence?

[Furtherman]

Furtherman, I just read that Nietzsche quote yesterday in "The Descent" by Jeff Long. Coincedence?

Or are we both about to go spelunking?


I recalled that quote from the beginning of the movie "The Abyss".

[mendyweiss]

Ask this queen !!http://music.commongate.com/post/Brian_May_hands_in_science_PhD

[mendyweiss]

Sorry, didn't paste !!. Brian May of Queen got his pHD in Astronomy, 36 years after starting grad School. I guess not all the brain cells got fried !

[KC2OSO]

Google has mapped the earth and now the heavens. (http://earth.google.com/sky/skyedu.html) I like the Python bit better though. That whole movie goes well with psilocybin.

[Furtherman]

If you want to fly through the heavens, in 3D and in real time (or the speed of light), download Celestia. (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/)

It's friggin' awesome. And free! You can travel to any of thousands of spacecraft, comets, asteroids, planets, stars and galaxies.

[KC2OSO]

If you want to fly through the heavens, in 3D and in real time (or the speed of light), download Celestia. (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/)

It's friggin' awesome. And free! You can travel to any of thousands of spacecraft, comets, asteroids, planets, stars and galaxies.
Awesome is right. Way better than Google. Thank you sir. Well, my evening is set.:thumbup:

[cougarjake13]

the one things that always mindfucks my brain is to think of things this way

i live in tampa,

which is in florida

which is in the usa

which is on the earth

which is in the milky way

which is in a galaxy

which is in the universe

but where the fuck is the universe ????????????????




i always imagine its some higher beings snowglobe on his desk table and whenever he shakes its up is when we get earthquakes, tidal waves, storms, etc.

[Chigworthy]

Lol. Florida isn't part of the universe.

[drjoek]

Lol. Florida isn't part of the universe.

ESPECIALLY TAMPA !!!!

[joethebartender]

the center of the milky way:

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/happenings/20050401/milkyway.jpg

[Furtherman]

If you want to fly through the heavens, in 3D and in real time (or the speed of light), download Celestia. (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/)

It's friggin' awesome. And free! You can travel to any of thousands of spacecraft, comets, asteroids, planets, stars and galaxies.


If you liked Celestia... you'll LOVE the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope. (http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/)

The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.

Choose from a growing number of guided tours of the sky by astronomers and educators from some of the most famous observatories and planetariums in the country. Feel free at any time to pause the tour, explore on your own (with multiple information sources for objects at your fingertips), and rejoin the tour where you left off.

I've just been browsing around on it and it's insane. Instead of the graphics that Celestia uses, this one uses actual pictures of planets, stars, nebula, etc. Doesn't seem as easy to fly around, but it may take some getting use to. Engage.

http://media.komotv.com/images/080513_WorldWide_telescope.jpg

[Section 8]

Since I was a kid, I thought that the "Big Bang" is someone else's atom-smashing experiment. Kinda like the experiments we did when we discovered quarks and stuff.

The bigger you get, the slower time goes for you. The smaller you get, the quicker. While it seems like billions of years on our end, it's probably .0000000001 seconds for whoever atom-smashed our "universe" into existance.

[TeeBone]

ESPECIALLY TAMPA !!!!

My intelligence has never been more impugned as it is when I read a post from you.

[Brad_Rush]

If you liked Celestia... you'll LOVE the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope. (http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/)



I've just been browsing around on it and it's insane. Instead of the graphics that Celestia uses, this one uses actual pictures of planets, stars, nebula, etc. Doesn't seem as easy to fly around, but it may take some getting use to. Engage.

http://media.komotv.com/images/080513_WorldWide_telescope.jpg

Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

[Furtherman]

The housing shortage is worse than you think. Now our galaxy has been downgraded.

Whitney Clavin 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.


NEWS RELEASE: 2008-094

June 3, 2008

Two of the Milky Way's Spiral Arms Go Missing

St. Louis, Mo. -- For decades, astronomers have been blind to what our galaxy, the Milky Way, really looks like. After all, we sit in the midst of it and can't step outside for a bird's eye view.

Now, new images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are shedding light on the true structure of the Milky Way, revealing that it has just two major arms of stars instead of the four it was previously thought to possess.

"Spitzer has provided us with a starting point for rethinking the structure of the Milky Way," said Robert Benjamin of the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, who presented the new results at a press conference today at the 212th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, Mo. "We will keep revising our picture in the same way that early explorers sailing around the globe had to keep revising their maps."

An artist's concept of the structure of our two-armed Milky Way is online at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/20080603a.html .

[Furtherman]

We have a new resident of our solar system.

Just wave hello, as it's just passing through.

A "minor planet" with the prosaic name 2006 SQ372 is just over two billion miles from Earth, a bit closer than the planet Neptune. But this lump of ice and rock is beginning the return leg of a 22,500-year journey that will take it to a distance of 150 billion miles, nearly 1,600 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, according to a team of researchers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II). (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819085858.htm)

[weekapaugjz]

so last night, i saw something in the stars i have never seen before. ive spent hours upon hours gazing at the stars out in the fields with a guidebook and flashlight but have never seen something quite like this.

so it was about 5:30 am and i was at work. a coworker told me to come take a look at something. it was, what seemed to be a star, twinkling. but it was unlike any other star i have ever seen. i know stars twinkle at whatever color (orange, red, white, faint blue) but this was unreal. it was pulsating between a bright red, green and white. the green and red were the same color that you would see from an aircraft (best analogy of color i can think of). the colors were very bright, not the faint twinkling you would usually see from a star. i knew it wasn't an aircraft because it wasn't moving.

the star location was in the southern sky just below orion. i wish i had my star guide but it unfortunately it is at my moms house in which i use it much more.

so the question is, what would cause this type of light to come from a star? we both wondered if the rising sun would have anything to do with light coming through the atmosphere or if because the star was so close to the horizon before sunrise, the light might affect how we viewed it from our location. could it be some type of "stellar flare" from the particular star?

i was just confused cause i have never seen anything like it before for and couldn't give a decent explanation. mike the teacher, please help...

[ahhdurr]

i hate to hijack, but this rocks

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic226482dv0ng.jpg
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic238050yl7mp.jpg
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic158908ek2cd.jpg
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i314/cowfishrule/pic067297bs4ui.jpg

I'm very very tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn nnnyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!

AUUUUUGHGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

[ahhdurr]

I thought this picture looked like this...
<br>
<img src = "http://www.geocities.com/paperbag3/xmradio.jpg">