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Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day speaks for itself: big galaxy, eats small galaxy (nom!). PIcture was taken with the Danish 1.5 m telescope at La Silla. Pretty! Enjoy, Happy Thanksgiving if you’re in the US and OMG I hope you’re ok if you’re in Mumbai.
Image credit: Robert Gendler, Jan-Erik Ovaldsen, Allan Hornstrup, IDA
Spiral galaxy NGC7331
Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is really gorgeous. This image of spiral galaxy NGC7331, found in the constellation of Pegasus and located at a distance of approximately 50 million lightyears, was taken with the optical LAICA instrument on the Zeiss 3.5-m telescope at Calar Alto Observatory in Spain. The exquisite quality of the picture shows the clear warping in the disk of the galaxy. Commonly observed in spiral galaxies, warped disks are thought to be the result of past encounters with other galaxies, or some kind of gravitational interaction with other nearby galaxies.
I didn’t even know about this myth – but apparently some people believe that the equinoxes are the only day of the year when you can balance eggs on their ends (riiiight).
Twice a year the path of the Sun crosses the Earth’s equator, making night and day precisely the same length. Most people know these days as the start of springtime (the vernal equinox) and the start of autumn (the autumnal equinox). Of course the vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere is the autumnal equinox in the South, and so on. The northern automnal equinox takes place tomorrow!
Anyway so today’s APOD shows photographic evidence that this is not the case, courtesy of mr. Bad Astronomer Phil Plait, who managed the extraordinary feat in late October back in 1998.
Oh look, he even posted a little video with instructions on how to repeat the experiment with your own equipment. In that case, I’ll excuse him the sloppiness of the original experiment in showing no evidence of the date the photo was taken.
Clap clap.
Today’s APOD image is very impressive – AND taken in the infrared with the excellent Spitzer Space Telescope. It shows one of our galaxy’s best-known regions where massive stars are being born, called W5. It lies about 6500 light years away and measures over 200 light years across.
Generations of Stars in W5 Credit Lori Allen, Xavier Koenig (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) et al., JPL-Caltech, NASA
I’m a bit late to it and it has appeared in a few other places before, but this picture, which appeared on APOD on 22 August, is so stunning I still want to post it up here. It shows a visible light image from the Hubble Space Telescope of this active galaxy. Coolness: if you go to the original APOD post you can overlay radio and X-ray images over this one from Hubble by hovering your cursor over it. Nice touch!
Active Galaxy NGC 1275 Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA); A. Fabian (IoA, Cambridge U.), L. Frattare (STScI), CXC, G. Taylor, NRAO,VLA
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