Andromeda
esiegel | October 26, 2013"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little." -George Carlin
Whatever you may think of the chances are for intelligent life in our galaxy are today, I can guarantee you they're going to go up dramatically in a few billion years. Sure, by that time the Earth may be a little too hot for comfort, and in that sense -- as Split Lip Rayfield would say -- we'll probably
Never Make It Home.
But that doesn't mean there won't be a new-and-improved home out there, not only from among the stars and planets in our…
esiegel | September 2, 2013"We find them smaller and fainter, in constantly increasing numbers, and we know that we are reaching into space, farther and farther, until, with the faintest nebulae that can be detected with the greatest telescopes, we arrive at the frontier of the known universe." -Edwin Powell Hubble
With 110 deep-sky objects scattered throughout the heavens, the Messier Catalogue provides skywatchers across the globe with a number of spectacular targets, from nearby nebulae and clusters to spectacular, distant galaxies. Each Monday, we spotlight a new one right here.
Image credit: Rolando Ligustri,…
esiegel | August 23, 2012"It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see." -Winston Churchill
We've come a long way in this Universe. Over the past 13.7 billion years, we've formed the light elements out of a sea of protons and neutrons, cooled and expanded to form neutral atoms for the first time, gravitationally collapsed hydrogen and helium gas clouds to form the first stars, borne witness to generations of stellar deaths and rebirths, lived through the formation of hundreds of billions of galaxies and the clustering together of thousands or more galaxies into clusters, filaments,…
esiegel | February 29, 2008The Milky Way galaxy is a relatively big spiral galaxy. So is Andromeda. There are about 20 dwarf galaxies that are gravitationally bound to us; combined with us, all of this makes up the local group. But Andromeda is moving towards us, and eventually, it's going to merge with us. I'll once again show you a video of what this merger might look like:
But what would we see, here in the Milky Way, as Andromeda got closer and closer to us? Right now, Andromeda looks like this:
But Andromeda is also very far away: about 2.3 million light years (770 kpc). The center of it is tiny on the sky, but…
esiegel | February 13, 2008Last week, Jamie (my significant other) came home from work and told me about a conversation she had with her coworker, Chris. This week she asked another one, Miguel, whether he had any questions about Astronomy, Physics, space, etc. This week's question comes from Miguel:
What is a galaxy, anyway? Why does it look like a big bright fuzzy star? And why are there different types of galaxies; shouldn't they all be the same?
This might come as a surprise, but 100 years ago, it was pretty much accepted that we were the only galaxy in the Universe. In fact, there was a great debate in 1920 on…