Starship Asterisk*

by **Beyond** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 5:09 pm

And to think that Homer was only travelling at warped mind 1.

by **Universal Speedbump** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 4:12 pm

geckzilla wrote:
Ann wrote:I agree. But I feel more than calibrated. I feel pretty awesome. It took the universe to make me and the rest of humanity. Isn't that something?
I don't know if it is or is not. Say our Universe is the experiment of something else's advanced equivalent of elementary school children. Who's to say ours is the smart student's and not their version of Ralph Wiggum?

We all exist in Homer's head https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVbfpFfLXPw

by **chuckster** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 7:51 pm

Ann wrote:
geckzilla wrote:
chuckster wrote:I don't feel small ; I feel calibrated.
That's a pretty good way of putting it.
I agree. But I feel more than calibrated. I feel pretty awesome. It took the universe to make me and the rest of humanity. Isn't that something?

Ann

I feel awesome about it all, too. I'm not going to let some postulated inconsequentiality of our existence bother me, and it doesn't take much effort, because it would be against a backdrop I have no reference points for. If you're religious, the implication is that we, and all alien races, are just dancing bugs in a universe where only God knows the Big Picture, and are therefore predisposed to living inside a bubble of cluelessness. Also, one must have been scarred in childhood to reach out that far into space and time for reasons to keep from feeling good about what we can see, in an effort to avoid the possible embarassment of learning we're just a fleck of dust on the surface of some higher reality. It doesn't matter. Our plate is full, we have free will, and the only way to dispel ignorance is to pursue knowledge, regardless of the Big Picture. You never know how that dust-mote-on-a-higher-level-reality-surface thing will actually turn out.

by **BMAONE23** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 4:15 am

The other galaxy in the upper right, near the red star, looks like the alien mothership from Independence Day...perhaps that is where they hail from

by **DavidLeodis** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 11:40 pm

geckzilla wrote:
DavidLeodis wrote:Clicking on the APOD brings up the full image that was also in the Hubble NewsCenter and Hubble ESA releases. For my interest (and anyone else that may have wondered) does anyone know the name (if it has one ) of the obvious galaxy in the right in the full image.
It doesn't have a name. It has at least a couple of catalog entries but that's it. NED search

Thanks geckzilla

. So it's a GWAN (Galaxy Without A Name). I think I may claim it to be named David's Galaxy

.

by **geckzilla** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 7:08 pm

DavidLeodis wrote:Clicking on the APOD brings up the full image that was also in the Hubble NewsCenter and Hubble ESA releases. For my interest (and anyone else that may have wondered) does anyone know the name (if it has one ) of the obvious galaxy in the right in the full image.

It doesn't have a name. It has at least a couple of catalog entries but that's it. NED search

by **DavidLeodis** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 7:01 pm

Clicking on the APOD brings up the full image that was also in the Hubble NewsCenter and Hubble ESA releases. For my interest (and anyone else that may have wondered) does anyone know the name (if it has one

) of the obvious galaxy in the right in the full image.

by **Nitpicker** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 5:40 am

For all intents and purposes, the universes of our imaginations are more real than any universes beyond our observable universe. Some of the universes in my head are much groovier than the observable universe. Some are bleaker.

by **geckzilla** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 5:08 am

It could be one where there isn't any crunching or expanding. Maybe it doesn't even have gravity or maybe gravity works way differently.

by **Ann** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:43 am

geckzilla wrote:Still, with no other examples with to compare ourselves to, it's hard to say if it's the neatest Universe or not. I mean, we might be a plain black marble while others are chock full of blue stuff instead of mostly empty void. What would you think about a Universe that's got lots of blue stuff in it?

It's like those people who had to come up with the idea of a paradise in the afterlife because this Earth isn't good enough. Sure, a blue Universe would be nice, but I'll be careful with what I wish for. I think that a contracting Universe on its way the the Big Crunch would be blue (because everything in it would be blueshifted), but that doesn't mean I would want that thing!

Ann

by **geckzilla** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 4:02 am

Still, with no other examples with to compare ourselves to, it's hard to say if it's the neatest Universe or not. I mean, we might be a plain black marble while others are chock full of blue stuff instead of mostly empty void. What would you think about a Universe that's got lots of blue stuff in it?

by **Ann** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:51 am

geckzilla wrote:
Ann wrote:I agree. But I feel more than calibrated. I feel pretty awesome. It took the universe to make me and the rest of humanity. Isn't that something?
I don't know if it is or is not. Say our Universe is the experiment of something else's advanced equivalent of elementary school children. Who's to say ours is the smart student's and not their version of Ralph Wiggum?

Our Universe might be the experiment of something else's advanced equivalent of elementary school children? Well, when I was a teen a bunch of us used to say that the Universe might be a molecule in a tire in somebody else's super-duper-mega-kiloparsecs-are-nothing bicycle. We wondered where this super-duper-mega-kiloparsecs-are-nothing person was pedalling us, and what would happen if we hit a sharp super-duper-mega-kiloparsecs-are-nothing rock, so that our Universe split open and the super-duper-mega-kiloparsecs-are-nothing bicycle tire got a puncture.

But hey, I'm quite satisfied to think of our Universe as perfectly impersonal and without purpose. And I love thinking that this senseless thing exploded from the Big Bang and evolved and convulsed and produced stars and supernovas and tossed around dark matter and dark energy until eventually, after almost fourteen billion years, it made us. Pretty neat!

Ann

by **geckzilla** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:24 am

Ann wrote:I agree. But I feel more than calibrated. I feel pretty awesome. It took the universe to make me and the rest of humanity. Isn't that something?

I don't know if it is or is not. Say our Universe is the experiment of something else's advanced equivalent of elementary school children. Who's to say ours is the smart student's and not their version of Ralph Wiggum?

by **Ann** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 2:16 am

geckzilla wrote:
chuckster wrote:I don't feel small ; I feel calibrated.
That's a pretty good way of putting it.

I agree. But I feel more than calibrated. I feel pretty awesome. It took the universe to make me and the rest of humanity. Isn't that something?

Ann

by **geckzilla** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 2:10 am

chuckster wrote:I don't feel small ; I feel calibrated.

That's a pretty good way of putting it.

by **chuckster** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 11:53 pm

A lot of people don't like to hear talk about how humans are "but moments of light, fading in the grass" (as the Youngbloods put it), but reading this caption and looking at a picture of colliding galaxies, IMHO, puts me in a perspective that does not constitute an insult or condescending put-down. I feel lucky to live in an age where instruments and astrophysics gives us all a clue to images like this. I don't feel small ; I feel calibrated.

by **Craine** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 6:33 pm

neufer wrote:...
Chris's 4 arcminutes (~50,000 ly) refers more to the pair of interacting galaxies NGC 7714 + NGC 7715 (a.k.a., Arp 284).

(Note, however, that the redshift distance to Arp 284 is more like 141 Mly and would make everything not quite so small.)

SIMBAD quotes the distance as ~39.6 Mpc, which would be around 130Mly.
NASA/IPAC quotes 30 Mpc or about 100Mly.
SpaceTelescope quotes 100 Mly. (probably taken from NASA/IPAC)

It may be due to some different red-shift numbers from different observations.

Bottom line: It's a cool photo!

by **neufer** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:20 pm

Chris Peterson wrote:
Craine wrote:
Ann wrote:
By the way, I found this link that tells you about the size of NGC 7714 (it's small).
Yes, 2000 light years is oddly small. I am having some doubt whether that is correct.
Your doubt is justified. The nominal distance to the galaxy found in recent literature is 14 Mpc (46 Mly). It subtends about 4 arcminutes. So its physical diameter is around 50,000 ly, which is consistent with what we'd expect for a galaxy like this.

: [url=http://www.kopernik.org/images/archive/n7714.htm][b][color=#0000FF][size=150]Arp 284 (NGC 7714 + NGC 7715)[/size][/color][/b][/url]

First off... Ann's link states that the actual small size of NGC 7714 is ~6.5 Kpc which should have read 20,000 light years consistent with being at a distance of 14 Mpc (46 Mly).

Chris's 4 arcminutes (~50,000 ly) refers more to the pair of interacting galaxies NGC 7714 + NGC 7715 (a.k.a., Arp 284).

(Note, however, that the redshift distance to Arp 284 is more like 141 Mly and would make everything not quite so small.)

by **Chris Peterson** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 3:22 pm

Craine wrote:Yes, 2000 light years is oddly small. I am having some doubt whether that is correct.

Your doubt is justified.

The nominal distance to the galaxy found in recent literature is 14 Mpc (46 Mly). It subtends about 4 arcminutes. So its physical diameter is around 50,000 ly, which is consistent with what we'd expect for a galaxy like this.

by **Ann** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 2:55 pm

Craine wrote:
Ann wrote:By the way, I found this link that tells you about the size of NGC 7714 (it's small) and the filters used for the image. The blue color represents ultraviolet light, so those blue stars are hot stuff!

Ann
Yes, 2000 light years is oddly small. I am having some doubt whether that is correct.

Yes, but consider this:

APOD Robot wrote:
Observations indicate that the golden ring pictured is composed of millions of older Sun-like stars

Millions of older Sun-like stars? That's a tiny number indeed. The Milky Way likely contains 200 billion stars, most of which are Sun-like or even smaller and cooler. A galaxy that contains only millions of Sun-like stars has to be either small or extremely star-poor, so that its surface brightness is extremely low. The latter condition does not apply to NGC 7741.

Ann

by **Craine** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 1:22 pm

Ann wrote:By the way, I found this link that tells you about the size of NGC 7714 (it's small) and the filters used for the image. The blue color represents ultraviolet light, so those blue stars are hot stuff!

Ann

Yes, 2000 light years is oddly small. I am having some doubt whether that is correct.
For comparison, the Large Magellanic Cloud is 14000 light years in diameter and our Milky Way is estimated as 100k-180k light years.
And this site http://rebuild-the-universe.wikia.com/wiki/NGC_7714 suggest a 35000 light year diameter.
And this one http://cseligman.com/text/atlas/ngc77.htm#7714 mentions 70000 light years.
So, a lot of wildly different numbers.

by **starsurfer** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 12:41 pm

Ann wrote:By the way, I found this link that tells you about the size of NGC 7714 (it's small) and the filters used for the image. The blue color represents ultraviolet light, so those blue stars are hot stuff!

Ann

I always love Hubble images of peculiar galaxies but generally any images of interacting and colliding galaxies, they always covey a sense of dynamism and titanic forces. This image is missing Ha which also would have showed many emission nebulae, the birth of some would have likely been triggered by the collision.

by **Ann** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 7:27 am

By the way, I found this link that tells you about the size of NGC 7714 (it's small) and the filters used for the image. The blue color represents ultraviolet light, so those blue stars are hot stuff!

Ann

by **Ann** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 7:23 am

Great picture! Galaxies are my favorite objects in astronomy, and peculiar and interacting galaxies are even better. Thanks for that link to the APOD Restrospective about peculiar and interacting galaxies, too!

Ann

by **Boomer12k** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 7:10 am

So...um...two...hypothetical space-fairing species....with decent "empires"....take notice of each other....it is going to be a long time passing...and some stars are captured.... how do the species interact????

:---[===] *

Starship Asterisk*

APOD: Galaxy NGC 7714 After Collision (2015 Jun 09)

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