Not to mention having the makings of the
first BBQ grill...brew and BBQ, life was good.
Posted on 08/16/2005 7:04:45 PM PDT by LibWhacker
The Milky Way is not a perfect spiral galaxy but instead sports a long bar through its centre, according to new infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
Galaxies come in a wide variety of shapes usually thought to be produced by gravitational interactions with nearby objects. Some spiral galaxies look like pinwheels, with their arms curving out from a central bulge, while others have a straight bar at their centres.
Radio telescopes detected gas that hinted at a bar at the heart of the Milky Way in the late 1980s. A decade later, observations with the near infrared survey 2MASS bolstered the case for a bar, but dust in the centre of the galaxy obscured the observations.
Now, astronomers have used Spitzer to peer through that dust at slightly longer wavelengths, observing 30 million stars in the galactic plane in the region around the centre of the galaxy.
They found that the central bar was much longer than previous observations had suggested - reaching about half the distance between the galaxy's centre and our Sun. The bar is estimated to stretch a total of about 27,000 light years from end to end.
"It is a major component of our galaxy and has basically remained hidden until now," says team member Ed Churchwell, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, US. "The fact that it's large means it's going to have a major effect on the dynamics of the inner part of our galaxy."
Bar food
Stars in the spiral arms circle the galaxy in roughly circular orbits. But the old, red stars in the bar appear to be on more elliptical paths that take them more directly towards and away from the galaxy's core, where a colossal black hole is thought to lurk.
"This bar probably does carry matter into the centre of the galaxy and feeds the black hole," Churchwell told New Scientist.
But it is still not clear what the discovery reveals about the Milky Way's past. "I don't think anybody really fully understands how bars are formed," says Churchwell. "What we do know is that it appears there are so many barred galaxies they must be rather stable. Astronomers have to come up with some kind of model that can explain the stability of these structures."
The team will publish its results in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters and has requested more time on Spitzer to study the innermost part of the Milky Way.
Yes.
42.
It's actually confirmation rather than finding.
GMTA - But I actually managed to do it on Post #42 ;-)
Please respect the sanctity of this thread. NO HUMOR!
"So what is the actual significance of this finding?"
This is the answer we have all been looking for. Now we know why space aliens have been visiting this outpost of the universe. We are the only galaxy with a bar. Thay have been coming here asking for directions.
World's worst mall map.
Our galaxy is definitely amongst the more impressive in the universe, and I'd imagine functions as very popular desktop wallpaper on many a far-off planet. The Magellanic civilizations have an especially nice view, and probably even some very interesting apocalyptic myths about when we're gonna suck them in to their fiery doom. =)
42 = 6 X 9 (in base 13)
And as at many earthside bars, there's a black hole in there waiting to gobble up the unwary.
I'll take a gargleblaster to go.
Cheers,
knews hound
http://knewshound.blogspot.com/
Of course give Rosie O'Donnell a few more cheesecakes and she'll turn into a black hole and draw the rest of the galaxy closer...
Not to mention having the makings of the
first BBQ grill...brew and BBQ, life was good.
Step Two:
Step Three: Profit.
OTOH, if we are alone, as we appear to be, nobody but us cares that our home galaxy is the most impressive one for millions of light-years in any direction. We care because we need to feel part of something important somehow.
My (very amateur) guess is that whatever the very massive object is at the center of our galaxy, it is probably binary. Perhaps it is a pair of black holes or perhaps something yet to be discovered. That would account for the eliptical orbits of the stars closest to the center. Just a guess.
I wander onto to this thread out of curiosity. I'm sure there must be a ping list somewhere. Try searching keyword "space"
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