Posted on 12/18/2014 9:13:33 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Explanation: Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 7331 is often touted as an analog to our own Milky Way. About 50 million light-years distant in the northern constellation Pegasus, NGC 7331 was recognized early on as a spiral nebula and is actually one of the brighter galaxies not included in Charles Messier's famous 18th century catalog. Since the galaxy's disk is inclined to our line-of-sight, long telescopic exposures often result in an image that evokes a strong sense of depth. The effect is further enhanced in this sharp image from a small telescope by galaxies that lie beyond the gorgeous island universe. The most prominent background galaxies are about one tenth the apparent size of NGC 7331 and so lie roughly ten times farther away. Their close alignment on the sky with NGC 7331 occurs just by chance. Seen through faint foreground dust clouds lingering above the plane of Milky Way, this visual grouping of galaxies is known as the Deer Lick Group.
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[Credit & Copyright: Tony Hallas]
I love spiral galaxies... Not that I hate elliptical ones, by the way. I mean that I just, well... you know.
Spiral galaxies ought to be impossible. They can only exist due to dark matter, which is a totally mysterious substance, is inexplicable (the Standard Model cannot explain it), and seems to be just there.
I think God created DM just for the aesthetics to make the all those galaxies look cool and interesting with all those elegant spiral whorls. Otherwise every galaxy would be the same, a featureless fuzzball, and they would all look really dull and boring. With DM every galaxy is unique, like snowflakes.
Every time I see one of those pics of a galaxy like that, I can’t help but to wonder among ALL that, if there could be a planet like ours inside. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t one.
I’ve been reading and looking at this stuff for awhile now, and still can’t comprehend the vastness of it all. It’s just staggering. (for my feeble mind anyway lol)
Evolution just can’t explain all this;just an all-knowing,all powerful Creator.
Amen.
Dihydrogen monoxide is probably the oddest substance in the universe. A universal solvent and catalyst, its solid form is actually less dense than its liquid form, which is totally bizarre. Without that characteristic ice would not float and water-under-ice worlds like Europa could not exist, nor could life in Earth’s oceans during its snowball cycles.
And it’s all due to something called the van der Waals force, which is a total hack. It puts the hydrogen ions at 104.5 degrees instead of the expected 180 degrees due to their mutual repulsion, allowing water to float and crystalize all those marvelous snowflakes in beautiful six-sided symmetry. It also makes proteins and other organics fold just right to create all of those wonderfully complex structures like enzymes, DNA, and people.
There is still no complete theoretical quantum mechanical model for why the van der Waals force works like it does (in physics textbooks it usually gets handwaved away as a complex side effect of the electroweak force).
It’s a beautiful hack though.
The Pauli exclusion principal. There are so many forces in the universe that I begin to lose track of it all. God made it one of causality, however. I can actually explain how spiral galaxies get their lanes. It’s because of gravitational density, similar to stop-and-go zones on a freeway. The spiral lanes rotate slower than the stars do, our sun having passed through many of them in its history. It’s been simulated in supercomputers.
I wonder how many APOD subscribers have that picture for the background on their computers.
I have my husband holding my cat on mine, but I was tempted to change it to NGC 7331.
Thank you, Mr. Civilizations.
Post-it galaxies are my personal favorites.
Sure, but that scene wound up on the cutting room floor.
Maybe they could be shopped to appear to be nestled in NGC 7331 as if it were a papasan chair? :’)
I’ve just watched “Animal House” for the first time in years.
You’re high, aren’t you. Oh, sorry.
:’) Pretty kitty.
He was my favorite cat of all time. I cried for two years over him because I missed him so much. I
sometimes go through all the pictures we took of him and our other cats, but I always end up in tears.
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