Pale blue dot

This is an interesting juxtaposition with the previous blog. That tiny blue dot is Earth seen from Voyager 1 at a distance of just 6 billion kilometers, and it was taken 25 years ago. Let TPP say now that Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog is one of the most consistently interesting and informative science blogs out there. Please take the time to read the essay by Carl Sagan posted there because even though our residence is part of a galaxy not unlike M106, this tiny blue dot is all we got. Wish we would take better care of it and stop acting as a species as if it was ours to squander.

WOW! Galaxy M106 poses

This is a pretty mind-blowing image of galaxy M106, and you can download an even higher resolution image. This is pretty amazing stuff. Apparently some of this composite image, the red arms, result from a massive black hole spewing out energy & hot matter across, across, hmm, no idea the scale of things here, thousands of light years?  If you look at the back ground, you see all those other things, and they be other galaxies. Just wow! 

Long, long ago, far, far away

This is a pretty amazing photograph of NGC 1398, the barred galaxy. There is something strangely compelling about images like this of things so huge and so far away. Their camera must have a mighty fine zoom lens. Think about how many stars are in such a galaxy. Then think about all those other little lights in the background that are also galaxies (all of them), and just in this one little bit of space. Some intellect out there is probably pointing their see-far thingy at the Milky Way, and saying, let me write a blog about how amazing this is.

That's a lot of stars; That's a lot of galaxies

Unless you've had a chance to get away from civilization, way away from civilization, you don't really know what the night time sky looks like because of light pollution. Years ago TPP found himself in the outback of northern Queensland at a quaint place called the 40-mile Scrub. So no lights, no clouds, no humidity, and it was amazing what you could see of this unfamiliar night sky. The scope of our galaxy and the universe it occupies is quite mind-boggling, the more so that this is a Monday morning when the mind is more easily boggled. At any rate here's a link to a photo essay about how many stars compose the Milky Way Galaxy (which BTW means milky). Personally, you should check the accuracy of this report because 200 billion sounds a bit off. And if that isn't enough, then here's a computer generated image of our local galactic super cluster, called Laniakea, and the tiny little dots aren't stars now but galaxies. The bright lines show more densely clustered galaxies, and remember the nearest similar galaxy, Andromeda, is 250 million light years away (and yes, that's not counting the 20 or so smaller galaxy like clusters of stars that are satellites of the Milky Way, e.g., Greater and Lesser Magellanic Clouds). See the nice little comforting "you are here" dot? My Garmin just melted down.

Judy in the skies with diamonds

A planet of diamond! What will those darned astronomers find next?