Astrophoto NGC2442 from Hubble Space Telescope

mosc

This is a picture of NGC 2442 - about 75000 light years across - about 50 million light years away. For comparison, our companion galaxy, the Andormeda Galaxy, the nearest large spiral to the Milky Way, is only about 2.5 million light years away.

Click on the image - it is big. Smile

From: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100325.html

Antimon · Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 4:30 am Post subject:

So beautiful...

DrJustice · Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 6:52 am Post subject:

Note how that picture is dotted with other galaxies, some seemingly very small and in front of NGC2442...

DJ
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mosc · Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 9:50 am Post subject:

Acoustic Interloper · Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 3:45 pm Post subject:

Shame we can't go out there and explore it (and by we I mean *me* and whoever else would like to come along, not necessarily the govt.), but thank goodness we have eyes to see these things.

Thanks, Howard!

bachus · Posted: Fri Mar 26, 2010 6:51 pm Post subject:

wow yes thanks

The far galaxie at about 7 oclock is a mindblowing image....

Peake · Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2010 11:34 am Post subject:

Beautiful!

mosc · Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2010 1:54 pm Post subject:

bachus · Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2010 2:42 pm Post subject:

Acoustic Interloper · Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2010 6:36 pm Post subject:

Oh, my comment about the govt. mostly had to do with not wanting to join the Air Force in order to go out there. Just us plain old folk wandering the galaxy. In fact I work for the state govt. in my professor job British humor

Maybe action at a distance could be put to use, not likely in our lifetime.

Have to keep probing inner space, I guess. Ohm...

klangumsetzer · Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 2:33 am Post subject:

it's like looking at various pasts. i wonder how this photograph would look like if object distance (time) and movement (* time) were taken into account. this picture taken at one point in time is real and yet shows something which never existed at one time alone.

if above is like that which is below inner space is huge! Wink

best regards

eike
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Pehr · Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 3:53 am Post subject:

Wow! Looking into the past, 50 million years ago... mind-blowing...

bachus · Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 5:13 am Post subject:

DrJustice · Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 6:17 am Post subject:

nobody · Joined: Mar 09, 2008 Posts: 1687 Location: Not here

Inner space is indeed huge. It's called quantum mechanics, and it's too bad it's a late comer to the spiritual game. Imagine if we'd learned about quantum mechanics before making up stories about omnipotent invisible friends...

I don't agree that astronomy would be lagging without Das Gov't. History bears this out. Galileo worked outside the system. If Der Guv cut of all funding to astronomy, we'd have plenty of Galileos doing what they can. I think the Mayans knew about all kinds of stuff without the fancy telescopes we have today. They probably knew about the rings about Saturn before someone aimed a scope at it. They certainly knew a lot about distant stars.

It's about using the old noggin', not whether some fascist organization approves with useless paper and metal tokens.

glow worm · Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2010 12:31 pm Post subject:

I love astronomy and cosmology - I just wish I had the maths ability to figure out some of the squiggles those astrophysicists like to cover blackboards with; but alas...

The thing that's intriguing me at the moment is the idea of Dark Flow - could this really be the first, tentative evidence of the existence of another universe? Shocked

mosc · Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2010 1:11 pm Post subject:

glow worm: Thanks for your post. I never head of Dark Flow before. I did a google search and found some good stuff.

I need to reread the Dark Flow stuff a few times to get a better feel for it.

nobody · Joined: Mar 09, 2008 Posts: 1687 Location: Not here

That's not when something is wrong with your woman's period, right...?

glow worm · Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2010 12:55 am Post subject:

Heh - not quite Wink

TBH I only heard about it myself a few weeks ago, on a TV programme (Horizon - BBC2) about the state of our knowledge of the Universe.

Dark Flow is an apparent net motion of galaxy superclusters, relative to the cosmic microwave background. It was 'discovered' in 2008 through analysis of three years' worth of data from the WMAP satellite.

The problem is that, according to the Standard Model of Cosmology, it shouldn't be there. The motion of of galaxy superclusters relative to the cosmic microwave background 'should' be random and evenly distributed. Galaxy superclusters 'should not' all be moving towards the same 20° patch of sky, between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela.

Some scientists say that the science is flawed, but the latest analysis of five years of WMAP data, appears to back the original conclusion.

So... What in heaven could be causing galactic superclusters to move towards one particular region of the sky, at millions of miles per hour? Whatever it is, it seems to lie outside the visible universe.

The two candidates are...
1. Some supermassive remnant from the early universe, that we don't understand.
2. Another universe, or some other region of spacetime, which is fundamentally different from the one we live in.

Whatever it is, it's another big problem for the poor old Standard Model of Cosmology, which has only just about managed to accomodate the idea of Dark Energy Confused

Antimon · Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2010 1:36 am Post subject:

nobody · Joined: Mar 09, 2008 Posts: 1687 Location: Not here

Stefan, who I'm going to start calling Stegan because I keep making that typo. Razz

Or maybe it's just a regular meeting of galactic superclusters. They're going to vote on what to do about us hyoomunz, so we better straighten up and fly right in the next few millennia.

Or maybe my song "Everything's Alive" is more right than I even suspect, from electrons to galactic superclusters! Shocked