Comments on: The dusty depths of a spectacular spiral galaxy

By: Picture Kaleidoscope 8/10/11 « Gloria Oliver

Picture Kaleidoscope 8/10/11 « Gloria Oliver — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 02:11:34 +0000

[...] Nate shared this article from Dicover Magazine with this awesome pic of a spiral [...]

By: Enlaces de Astronomía: Semana 01-08-2011 « Campos de Estrellas

Enlaces de Astronomía: Semana 01-08-2011 « Campos de Estrellas — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 19:56:13 +0000

[...] Galaxias: Could Reflected Radiation of Active Galactic Nuclei be the Long-Sought Missing Part of the Cosmic X-ray Background?. The dusty depths of a spectacular spiral galaxy. [...]

By: cesar

cesar — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 21:34:59 +0000

awesome!! thank god for smart people

By: bk_2

bk_2 — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 08:43:19 +0000

There’s another factor in effect here. The dust lanes on the far side of the galaxy are illuminated on the near side by the brilliant galaxy center. They reflect a lot of that starlight, so they are less dark than the near clouds, which are in sillouhette against the brilliance behind.

I think this was mentioned before in the context of NGC 7049, but I can’t find a reference yet.

By: Anchor

Anchor — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 07:26:10 +0000

I’m frankly amazed that Phil’s ‘explanation’ hasn’t been blazingly obvious to everyone long before HST was even a glimmer in our eye. The effect has been well known for almost as long as we’ve realized what ‘spiral nebulae’ were – vast collections of stars. I have known it for over 45 years and have used it as a means of quickly determining which edge of a galaxy obliquely oriented to our line-of-sight in an image was closer to us: obviously the far side dark clouds are typically washed out by the intervening halo stars which are more densely populated near the core. (Yes, John Sandlin #21 & 22 is quite right). Every semi-serious student of galaxies I know is familiar with this elementary aspect of galaxy geometry, that they are diffuse distributions of stars attended by extensive haloes. Glad to discover that Phil Plaitt “suddenly realized” it now too “after mulling it over for a moment”.

Sheesh.

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 23:55:44 +0000

Stunningly, superluminously magnificent. I love that image. Good thinking and probable explanation for the darkness of the nearer side dust lanes there too.

In something I’m considering making a tradition here at BA Central, here is your Monday morning jaw-dropping spiral galaxy: NGC 634 as seen by Hubble

I love that idea too. Please make it so!

Isn’t that something?

Yes, it is a whole galaxy rich in glowing stars, dark dust lanes and, probably, invisible other exoplanets in their trillions among other wonders all set upon an exceptional star field of the Black speckled with stars and some neat background galaxies too.

By: John Sandlin

John Sandlin — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 23:13:04 +0000

Here’s an image that demonstrates, sort of, what I mean. I made a 3D galaxy-like disk, a central bright ball, rings that would be stars, rings that would be dust, and a faint halo of stars. Depending on the angle, the farther dark rings (and star rings, for that matter) are obscured.

https://picasaweb.google.com/sandlin.john/StudyDustyGalaxy?authkey=Gv1sRgCPfWzO-Dxr6kbg#5636028548430652034

By: John Sandlin

John Sandlin — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 22:27:11 +0000

In Windows 7 the wall paper can auto change.

I have another thought on the lack of visible dust on the farther side. Don’t the disks have a slight change in thickness so that near the core the disk is thicker (north to south) and have more stars than toward the edges. This should help hide dust lanes on the far side and show them better on the near, depending on the degree of tilt. And the halo idea would certainly be a contributing factor as you’re looking through a denser star pattern to see the disk on the far side than the near.

It’d be like standing in front of a crowd of people arranged tall in back to short in front for the near side, and behind a similarly arranged crowd for the far side. Everyone is visible from the front. Only the tallest are visible from behind.

By: Photo: The Beauty of the Universe Around Us — In the Mind of Jason Thibeault

Photo: The Beauty of the Universe Around Us — In the Mind of Jason Thibeault — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 22:08:41 +0000

[...] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/08/01/the-dusty-depths-of-a-spectacular-spiral-g... [...]

By: Antonio Ceci

Antonio Ceci — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 21:34:13 +0000

Another amazing screensaver for my laptop!!!! Every day at 3.00 pm (Rome time) I open your webpage to read someting amazing about science and space… Every time you surprise me with something very very special!
Thank you Phil!

By: Bill Loehr

Bill Loehr — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 21:29:06 +0000

You can see the halo of stars below NGC 634 as well. Quite astounding to take in the fact that the haze is made up of stars.

But what also intrigues me is how the left edge of the galaxy seems to be bent up –all those “blue” stars there. Any thoughts on that Phil? Is it an optical illusion of some kind? Is there an nearby galaxy pulling on the edge?

By: Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 20:36:40 +0000

A fog of stars… that thought is enough for now. Thanks, Phil.

By: Len Bonacci

Len Bonacci — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 20:16:06 +0000

I have another theory — From our point of view, the view of the far side of the galaxy is over 100 000 years older than the view of the near side. The near side has had 100 000 more years for dust to build up. Sounds reasonable — my house gets dusty over a span of only days!

But your theory is nice, too.

By: Mejilan

Mejilan — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:43:37 +0000

@ Kirk (3) and icewings (11):
For Win XP, there are a number of tools available to rotate through numerous desktop wallpaper images. A semi-legitimate program is called “Digital Photography Winter Fun Pack 2003″ and is available directly from Microsoft for free. I don’t think it allows for a random or shuffle mode, which is why ultimately I went with a third-party program.

By: The Barber of Civility

The Barber of Civility — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:10:12 +0000

@kirk -

For a number of years now I have downloaded astropix from Phil’s site as well as APOD (Google it). I now have 1209 (shortly to become 1211 with the two in this post) and almost 2GB of space used by them. My screen saver is used to randomly show the photos. They are so beautiful that I have set up an older machine in my office to be on screensaver all the time! It’s a Mac, so the graphic images are shown in all their resplendence!

Phil -

Good thought! Maybe YOU should fund the grant. (Would you still be able to come to Dragon*Con?)

@icewing -

Using the OS to change your desktop every five minutes is a processor-consuming task. If you find your PC to be slow sometimes, you might want to either have it change pictures less often, or try adding memory to offset some of the work the OS has to perform.

By: Ken B

Ken B — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:53:30 +0000

Kirk:

STOP IT!!!
I’m getting tired of changing my desktop background already!!!

Me too!

This weekend, we took our kids to a drive-in movie. (Yes, they still exist. This one is in Hyde Park, NY.) It was about an hour’s drive from our house, but our kids had never been to one, and they were showing the final Harry Potter movie.

Anyway, they show two movies, back-to-back. In between, I got out of the car to get some snacks, and looked up at the sky. It’s amazing how many more stars were visible from there, far away from big cities, in a cloud-free moonless sky.

By: Bill Morehouse

Bill Morehouse — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:25:08 +0000

The NGC 634 galaxy is about 250 Million light years away from earth, correct? So when we say a super nova blew up in the galaxy in 2008, we are really saying that’s when the light information reached earth? Just want to be sure I understand this. It would seem the actual super nova explosion would have happened ~250 Million years prior to its appearance at the earth. Thank you everyone for the interesting input.

By: icewings

icewings — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:15:23 +0000

Kirk – If you have Windows 7 you can tell your Display Settings to change the background picture every so often. I’m not sure if earlier versions of Windows have that feature.

I had to tell it to change pictures every 5 minutes, to rotate through all the great BA pix I’ve saved over the past year or so

By: CWorthington

CWorthington — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:04:13 +0000

Hmm. Your idea makes sense. I hope someone picks it up for research. A pity I can’t do the math of physics or I would go into astronomy. I should ask the astronomy profs at TXState about this.. hmmm…

By: Julie Marton

Julie Marton — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:53:58 +0000

I love the idea of starting my week off with spiral galaxies at Bad Astronomy. : )

By: Douglas Watts

Douglas Watts — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:40:53 +0000

The rough spiral galaxy to the top center left of the NGC 7049 halo is undergoing some massive blue star formation, well it was, like 2 billion years ago. Like Phil, I am a total sucker for these Hubble images of distant galaxies, if only because of the guilty pleasure derived from examining even more distant galaxies behind them !!! It’s like fried dough at the county fair.

By: Sam H

Sam H — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:39:12 +0000

I remember NGC 7049 – the so called “Crown of Thorns” galaxy that has particular significance among some Evangelical fundamentalists (including those at my old school), who hold it in regard alongside the core of M51 and (especially) the molecule Laminin. But either way, very beautiful and awesome

As well: I managed to go to my special stargazing site on a desolate country road 80 km south of my city with my 8-inch dob Saturday night – JUST AMAZING! Even though the collimation wasn’t perfect I managed to see the nebulae in Sagittarius (i could see the Lagoon Nebula with my frickin’ NAKED EYE), the Veil Nebula, a few globulars including M13, M57, the double cluster in Perseus (which I could also see with my naked eye – such a pleasant surprise, I thought it was only visible in winter!!), and MANY GALAXIES – M31, M33, M81, and even M51 (and I swear I could catch a hint of its spiral structure!!) And finally, a mystery star cluster that rose in the northeast later in the night I figured out were the Pleaides only as we left – and months ahead of season!! Just…win /end joyful rant

By: John

John — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:39:17 +0000

that lead pic is really something. Those foreground stars are a nice touch too. lovin that NGC634

By: kuhnigget

kuhnigget — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:38:33 +0000

Perhaps, “click to jawdroppinate”?

By: PsyberDave

PsyberDave — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:31:55 +0000

It’s like a Monday Metazoan, only ultra, magna, galactazoan.