We, by dent of our good fortune to be located in the south, get to see all the new and exciting things not (mostly) available to the northerners. At least not without digging deep in the pocket for at least one ticket south. And you are most welcome, even to stay.

So, we miss out on viewing M101 with virgin light, but have to be satisfied with reproductions. Mind you, I too consider it to be my best favorite galaxy, and the new interpretation only makes it better.

So thanks Phil and the NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA guys for your work. Much appreciated.

Ivan.

PS, I know each of us can travel around the world to see everything, but you cannot move the Observatories to the other hemisphere, as we would be back where we started! What we need are more “Hubbles”, and canning the Webb is the wrong way to go about that. But still, that is not quite the same as having one’s own set-up in the backyard or more realistically, in an adjacent dark sky site for Amateurs, at a reasonable distance.

“It’s a reliable favorite among amateur astronomers because it’s big, bright, and located near the north pole of the sky, so it’s easy to find for a big part of the year.”
From this we can (can’t we?) infer that there are no amateur astronomers south of the equator, perhaps even south of the tropics.

Er, NO you can’t infer that!

There are plenty of amateur (& professional too) astronomers based in the Southern hemisphere incl. those in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile and even a handful at or near the South Pole itself!

See :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pole_Telescope

for instance and say this wiki-page :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Evans_(astronomer)

for the amateur with the most supernovae discoveries ever or this one :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Payne-Scott

for the first ever female radio astronomer.

Oh and we southern hemispherers have better skies getting to see the Magellanic Clouds, Omega Centauri and the Southern Cross too!

*****

PS. “..perhaps even south of the tropics.” Um, you do know what’s on the top of Mauna Kea (Hawaii) right?

Not necessarily – there are, for instance, the barred spirals!

Plus there’s those you see edge on, ones with little activity or massive starbursts or interactions warping their shape and so on.

Of course, it depends whether we’re talking spirals generally or spiral galaxies specifically too!

The four largest countries (by land area) are all entirely in the northern hemisphere, as are the largest ones by population (India is entirely north of the Equator, as is China).

South, the largest country entirely below the equator (by land area) is Australia – Brazil is larger, but parts of Brazil are north of zero degrees.

It would be an interesting question – The ratios of their sizes is roughly 8:7, and roughly 1/8th of Brazil is north of the Equator – Which country has more southern area? I don’t know.

There are also Pacific Islander countries that cover huge areas – mostly of open water – but have very little land mass and not much population. Indonesia is a worthwhile exception, but it too borders on the Equator.

Anyhow – Worthless factoids for the day (but hey, I went and looked them up, so they were at least interesting to me!)

It’s a reliable favorite among amateur astronomers because it’s big, bright, and located near the north pole of the sky, so it’s easy to find for a big part of the year.

From this we can (can’t we?) infer that there are no amateur astronomers south of the equator, perhaps even south of the tropics.

http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/realfiles/members/2000/108p709-717richter/richterfig1B.GIF
Stable PAHs are compact
http://www.daviddarling.info/images/PAH_structures.jpg
Non-compact polyacenes are reactive.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicoronylene
One presumes the universe is mucked with dicoronylene.

Thankyou BA & the WISE guys (& girls – ‘guys’ being inclusive of them too!)

For a second there you had me thinking of the “other Pinwheel” galaxy – M33 the Triangulum galaxy which shares that nickname with M101 too.