Comments on: Stryding through the stars

By: Galàxia NGC 5907: bellesa còsmica | Diario BV

Galàxia NGC 5907: bellesa còsmica | Diario BV — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:32:14 +0000

[...] un astrònom professional hagi qualificat aquesta fotografia com una de les més sorprenents que ha vist en la seva vida és un bon aval per a una imatge impactant: El fantasma d’una [...]

By: jokergirl

jokergirl — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:25:21 +0000

It’s also currently my desktop background. (I think it was on APOD a while ago)
One of the best pictures out there.

By: Mike Torr

Mike Torr — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:30:26 +0000

The use of “thousand million” may have been natural caution. I’m not sure what “billion” means in Spain (which is where it was published, evidently), but although we have Krispy Kremes and MacDonalds in the UK now, there are still a few people here (mainly older people) who hear “billion” and think “million million”. In fact, I did when I was at school in the early 1970s. We only adopted the “American billion” fairly recently, and that was mainly due to the fact that it is used so often in global news reports about economies.

Any Spanish readers who can comment on this?

By: Jim Scotti

Jim Scotti — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:02:45 +0000

What a great image this is. It reminds me of a Basic program that I copied out of Astronomy Magazine around 20 years ago and then heavily modified which taught me that galaxies are very much 3-dimensional creatures and that some structures that you see as a disk thinking of it as being face on is really a a warped disk tilted at some unusual angle to your view.

The press release you link to is very informative but it does something that bugs me when I see it. It said: “…and formed from the destruction of one of its dwarf satellite galaxies at least four thousand million years ago.” Why couldn’t they just say it was four billion years ago? You might as well say it happened “twenty thousand two hundred thousand years ago….” or “fifty eighty million years ago”….

Jim.

By: Richard B. Drumm

Richard B. Drumm — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:56:03 +0000

Thanks for linking to Pamela’s blog! I have her & you on my bookmark bar. That was a frakin’ great post of hers. We of the Milky Way have our own tidal tails too, IIRC.
Richard Drumm the Astronomy Bum

By: Travis

Travis — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:07:30 +0000

Maybe this is a silly question, but why is it with some of the stars imaged, that there is dark halo around them (mainly the orange-ish star near the middle bottom of the picture)?

By: Phil Plait

Phil Plait — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:31:43 +0000

Phil Evans: I linked to the announcement of the scientific paper which links to his original. I probably should have included a link to the original too. Noted.