Saturday, May 6, 2006

I WONDER WHO'S OUT THERE

Dipping into the Astronomy Picture of the Day site again. This is a shot of the Southern Pinwheel galaxy. From the description, I'm assuming the best viewing is from the equator or southern hemisphere. Supposedly it's visible through binoculars but it'll probably look like a big blur. The bright blue areas along the spiral arms are areas of star formation and home to countless hot, bright blue stars. This is how the galaxy looked about 15 million years ago. Other members of the group include another galaxy known as Centaurus A.

The object in Centaurus A that looks like skewed triangle is the reamains of a collision of another smaller galaxy with this one. To make things even more interesting astronomers assume that there is a super sized black hole at the center of the galaxy.

So many stars, so little time

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