1) Vowels are pronounced as in English for the most part (hard to tell whether they will be long, though; compare “dāta” and “dăta”), but since “-es” involves a silent e in English, the pronunciation in anglicized Latin is /iz/.

2) Consonant sounds are “modernized” to match Modern English, meaning c sounds like /s/ before an e, i or y, g sounds like /dʒ/ before the same vowels, j and v are consonants, instead of semivowels. Some palatization occurs, such as in “ratio”, and “fasces”.

3) Vowel length is ignored, but the placement of stress is retained from Latin, so for instance, “Eridanus” is e-RI-da-nus, not e-ri-DA-nus.

4) The diphthongs ae and oe are pronounced the same as an e in the same place would be, and even affect c and g in the same way (e.g. “Caesar” and “algae”).

@13. eric : Yep. I think I’ve heard /read that GHZ idea mentioned a few times. Ideally a star isn’t in the dangerous galactic bulge region too close to an occssionally active and crowded nucleus and not too far away and hence likely to be too “metal” poor to enable life and technology to develop. Mind you its just an educated extrapolation and we’ve gathered far too little data at this stage to tell whether it has much validity or not.

@12. Jess Tauber : “Charles- try saying it in Old Entish, but, as per usual, take your time…”

LOL. Have you finished saying it yet then? (I won’t ask you to repeat it! Come to think of it, I shouldn’t interupt you should I?)

That system you’re looking at near M106 is the small companion galaxy NGC 4248. NED(NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database) pegs its’ distance at 7.3 Mpc (the distance to M 106 is given as 7.4 Mpc).

Intriguingly, despite the info noted in the wiki entry(and SIMBAD), NGC 4217 appears NOT to be a companion to M 106. NED gives its’ distance as 19.6 Mpc, over 10 Mpc more distant than M 106. Also, a 2010 study of the satellite galaxies of M 106 found over a dozen companions, including NGC 4248 but, alas, not NGC 4217(an interesting read, btw): http://arxiv.org/pdf/1011.2830v1.pdf

(Also directly linked to my name here – taken by Wilson – can’t find first /last name there.)

D’oh! Sometimes the things right in front of your eyes that you miss. Aaaaarrrgh!

Make that HunterWilson who took the photo. Not sure if that’s one hyphenated surname or a first and last name combo. My apologies to the individual in question and thanks for posting that astrophotograph on wiki for us all.

Apologies too for the typographical errors that I could swear my computer adds in after I’ve clicked the submit button. Honestly!

That second smaller and fainter one almost reminds me of the Large Magellanic Cloud in relation to our Galaxy – wonder if there’s any connection with M106′s shape and AGN dynamism? No idea though whether that second smaller companion – NOT NGC 4217 – is physically associated with M106 or just a backdrop line-of-sight galaxy. Anyone here able and willing to shed any light on that or know what that apparent companion’s designation is by any chance, please?

There are a number of other faint background galaxies in that Wilson picture too – a pair that the smaller galaxy there that the smaller LMC look-alike points too in the top centre of the astrophoto and a small spiral below diagonally left of NGC 4217 and a faint elleptical witha starlike core and faint milky halo below M106 and in line with NGC 4217 plus several others.

Also, judging from the power in those beams, if they were aimed at us the core of that galaxy would be really bright, and M106 would be a heckuva lot more famous than it already is. I wonder if it would be naked eye visible? It’s possible.

Messier 106 – seen from 25 million light years distance – currently has an apparent magnitude of 9.1 — so it’d certainly need to increase its apparentluminosity multifold times to reach sixth magnitude. Still I’ve read in one of Tim Ferrises excellent works that a ceryain type of AGN would shine as brightly as our Sun if were located in our Local Group of galaxies so, yeah, maybe -even if it isn’t exactly that sortof AGN!

—————————–

“Quasars are so luminous that if one was in action in a local group galaxy its brilliance would rival that of the Sun.”
- P.284, Ferris, ‘Seeing in the Dark’, Simon & Schuster, 2002.

Marvellous, thankyou BA & Andre vd Hoeven – & Hubble and the others too.