Posted on 05/09/2015 6:58:09 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: This popular group is famous as the Leo Triplet - a gathering of three magnificent galaxies in one field of view. Crowd pleasers when imaged with even modest telescopes, they can be introduced individually as NGC 3628 (left), M66 (bottom right), and M65 (top). All three are large spiral galaxies but they tend to look dissimilar because their galactic disks are tilted at different angles to our line of sight. NGC 3628 is seen edge-on, with obscuring dust lanes cutting across the plane of the galaxy, while the disks of M66 and M65 are both inclined enough to show off their spiral structure. Gravitational interactions between galaxies in the group have also left telltale signs, including the warped and inflated disk of NGC 3628 and the drawn out spiral arms of M66. This gorgeous view of the region spans about one degree (two full moons) on the sky. The field covers over 500 thousand light-years at the trio's estimated distance of 30 million light-years.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit and Copyright: Philippe Durville]
Now THAT’S Astronomy! :-)
Anything about the latest discovery of a galaxy some 13 billion light years away or so? One must wonder what it looks like now without the time lag...
Wow! Very nice. Think I’ll go visit them one of these days. :)
Thanks for posting.
Thirty million light years away. So if we sent a robot-manned explorer vessel (built to last for eons) at one tenth the speed of light, it would take 300 million light years to get to one of those galaxies, and then another 30 million light years to report back.
That sounds feasible. When does the Mission Planning start?
I wonder why Messier did not catalog the galaxy in the lower left (NGC 3628)? It obviously is of enough visual magnitude to have been seen during his observation.
“one tenth the speed of light” = 18,600 miles per second.
ONE light year, the distance light travels in a year at its speed of 186,000 miles per second, works out to about 5.9 TRILLION miles. And these 3 things are 30 MILLION light-years away. Yet they are practically our ‘next door neighbors’, given that there are galaxies over 13 BILLION light years away. Crazy stuff. Especially if you believe that all of this was once contained within a space many billions of times smaller than the nucleus of an atom, which is what the inflationary big bang model says.
300 million light-years * 0.1 speed of light = 30 million years (one way)
Light years are a measure of distance (Ie: the distance that light travels in one year) they are not a measure of time.
Regards,
GtG
30 million light-years / 0.1 speed of light = 300 million years (one way)
Light years are a measure of distance (Ie: the distance that light travels in one year) they are not a measure of time.
Regards,
GtG
One: the comet he was following didn’t go close enough to the third.
Two: NGC 3628 has a lower surface brightness than the others. Of the six scopes that Messier used, none were of better light gathering power than a 2.4 in refractor. They had bigger mirrors, but, he was using speculum for a primary and it wasn’t known for great reflectivity.
He could have looked at the field and missed it completely.
Look up the NGC 3190 for a nice grouping in the head of the Lion.
Yeah, I know. It will be a long, long, long time before we can get to one tenth the speed of light. And even if we have the propulsion to do so, will we ever be able to solve the problem of random collisions with interstellar dust particles, which at one tenth light speed will be catastrophic.
I saw something about that one, now that you mention it... hmm... I wonder if I saw that on FR, or elsewhere?
By the time the first Earth probe sent toward a different star system arrives there, Earth colonist will have been living there for centuries.
Tough to say, considering it might have been mistaken for a comet, which is what he had studied early on.
http://www.seasky.org/space-exploration/astronomers-charles-messier.html
Great Comet of 1744
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Comet_of_1744
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comet_with_six_tails.jpg
http://www.uh.edu/engines/comet1744.jpg
https://36.media.tumblr.com/7b70835f0d5decf406a2b1f2024c69a0/tumblr_nihyimynMO1qa9m0zo1_500.jpg
I may have missed one or more of your posts - after I mentioned the latest galaxy, I did a search and found some really dull pics due to the distance.
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