The Milky Way Gets a Facelift

ScienceNOW Daily News ^ | 03 June 2008 | Phil Berardelli

[SampleMan]

Is it an open bar? Because if its a galactic open bar, you know its got to be hoppin.

[dragnet2]

Our galaxy structure appears to be quite unique.

Fascinating!

[r9etb]

Meanwhile, another team probed the galaxy with the Very Long Baseline Array, which comprises a telescope of such power that you could use it to read a newspaper on the moon.

Assuming, of course, that one were properly tuned in to detect the characteristic radio emissions from the lunar newspaper.....

[aruanan]

Assuming, of course, that one were properly tuned in to detect the characteristic radio emissions from the lunar newspaper.....

Ha ha ha. That's a good one!

[mikrofon]

The purported location of the Star Wars scene?

[Swordmaker]

What?! It took them all this time to determine that the Milky Way contains a bar????

You can learn that at the local grocery store...

The Milky Way Bar

[neverdem]

ping

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem. This isn't an X-Planets topic, but is probably of interest, and it's been a slow couple of months. :')

· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic ·

[El Gato]

Our galaxy structure appears to be quite unique.

Not unique, just more unusual than we'd thought. There are several barred spirals visible in this "Hubble Deep Field" image. And that's just a little tiny piece of the universe as seen from out in the galactic boonies of one the Milky Way Galaxy's spiral arms.

[dragnet2]

I should have said with the bar structure being nearly twice the size as previously thought, that in itself would suggest our Milky Way galaxy is rather unique, if all this data and research is correct.

In addition, I think barred galaxies are believed to be temporary in the life of spiral galaxies, with the bar dissipating over time.

I've always been interested in galaxies. I see them as beautiful island universes within the universe.

About 3 weeks ago, I took image below of the Whirlpool M-51 Galaxy, in the Constellation Canes Venatici.

There is some dispute as to how distant this Galaxy actually is. I have read ranges from 23 million to 37 million light years away.

This digital image below was a set of 15 exposures at 50 seconds each, and stacked or combined into one image. I performed minimal processing to reveal additional data in the image. Given the conditions, and some new changes to the camera, I was pretty happy with it.

[SampleMan]

The purported location of the Star Wars scene?

Couldn't have been. That was in a galaxy far, far away.

[joseph20]

People think they know something about the universe, yet we don’t even know what our own galaxy looks like.

[Skooz]

bump

[Alas Babylon!]

Excellent! Good job! Not quite the Hubble image, but I bet you didn’t get to spend billions of $ on your equipment, either!

[AntiKev]

We’re not hosting an intergalactic kegger down here.

[mikrofon]

True... must’ve been some other barred galaxy.

[mowowie]

Sweet.

[dragnet2]

Excellent! Good job! Not quite the Hubble image, but I bet you didn’t get to spend billions of $ on your equipment, either!

Given my puny budget, it seemed like billions. lol... Actually it took my about 7 years to get to this point, collecting items as I went along, buying used, trading up, trying to keep up with technology etc. Thanks.

[Centurion2000]

reveal, among other things, that the Milky Way is missing two of the four spiral arms it was thought to have.

From another article with a lot more detail.

The galactic image that stuck, Benjamin said, was one with the four spiral arms, now called Norma, Scutum-Centaurus, Sagittarius and Perseus. Our sun lies near a small, partial arm called the Orion Arm, or Orion Spur, located between the Sagittarius and Perseus arms.

Using a star-counting method, Benjamin and his colleagues noticed an increase in the number of stars in the direction of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, but not in the direction of the Sagittarius and Norma arms. (The fourth arm, Perseus, wraps around the outer portion of our galaxy and cannot be seen in the new Spitzer images.) The two major arms, according to these findings, are the Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus arms.

The findings confirm an earlier observation by a team of astronomers, making a strong case that the Milky Way has two major spiral arms, a common structure for galaxies with bars. These major arms have the greatest densities of both young, bright stars and older, so-called red-giant stars.