Starship Asterisk*

I don't think that anyone has a particular one in mind, but the largest bound structure is probably a large galaxy cluster. I don't know which cluster has the most mass of those that have had theirs estimated, though.

I think it means heavier atomic nuclei, like a fully or partially ionised Iron atom for example. At the high energies being talked about it is entirely possible to strip all or most of the electrons from heavier nuclei. What it seems to be getting at is that such heavily ionised nuclei would feel a ...

Nereid - Although I am but a novice in this new field of discovery, what amazes me the most is your apparent lack of ability to do your own research. Some research is not beyond us sidekickbobcat/Craterchains. To reply to your point: the fact is that while Nereid and most of the other people on the...

Which ones exactly do you mean? There are some objects that are probably just red stars in the milky way, there is one small very red spiral that is visible between the two galaxies, this is probably just an S0 galaxy, a spiral which has stopped forming young blue stars and now only has the old red ...

Yup, makes you wonder why he doesn't get either bored or frustrated.

Perhaps he is just one of those "intelligent" codes, designed to mimic human conversations by giving a standard response to any reply.

Dutchman nailed it, its simply because when you do astronomy at least of the quantitative kind you work in SI units generally. Its a lot simpler to do calculations all within the SI framework you don't have to worry about units or conversion factors that way. Some people writing APOD blurbs will go ...

Some of the objects are stars in the Milky Way, and some are background galaxies or star clusters. But some are actually individual (or chance allignments of two) stars in the target galaxy. The HST is just about capable of resolving individual stars at this distance, but only if they are bright eno...

For instance, let us say that in this scenario, the universe existed prior to the BB, it contained matter, and when the 'event' that created the microwave background radiation that we see occured some 13.7 billion light years ago, it reorganized matter and space profoundly, likely by recycling matt...

Some galaxies do appear to "tumble" the case I know about is NGC 524, is obvious when you look at it it is a face on S0, essentially a dead spiral galaxy, you can see the residual spiral structure. However when you measure the velocity of different parts of the galaxy (as the SAURON collab...

To me it is more plausible that as a result of a BB energy was dispersed through pre-existing matter along with inflation of space. You seem to be suggesting that the Universe existed before the BB, that the BB then spread material through it, and caused space to expand. But if the BB caused the ex...

The bad astronomer had a decent post up a few week debunking the idea that the Sun formed in the Sagitarius dwarf.

You can find links here:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007 ... -followup/

Counter rotation is actually quite common in early type galaxies, the SAURON http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/sauron/ team has found many such cases, though the counter rotation is usually confined to the very inner region. My understanding is that the system remains fairly stable, there would be littl...

If I'm reading your question correctly I think you're asking about whether or not the Universe is homogeneous? I think the point is that on the very largest scales the Universe is fairly homogeneous, but clearly a galaxy is very far above the average density of the Universe. This is just because of ...

We're not presently part of any cluster, though over time our own little group will probably get swallowed up by something larger, perhaps the Virgo cluster, though I believe that may be too far away. The number of red and blue galaxies per cluster is not a sure sign of the clusters age, because som...

The Hercules cluster is probably younger, the Coma cluster is fairly old and settled, their has been time for interactions to convert the spirals into S0s and ellipticals. The Hercules cluster will probably look pretty similar a few billion years from now, when things have settled down.

Considering radiometric dating and the methods used (and calibration of such equipment and experiments) to gain "knowledge" of said science remains dependent on a theory of time spans to begin with. Well not really, I can sit in a lab and watch a certain fraction of a radioactive material...

There is another reason why images are presented in certain resolutions. That is simply the size of the image produced by the instrument, the ACS on Hubble for instance produces images of around 4000 x 4000 pixels, there simply isn't any point changing this as it doesn't add any information. Most ot...

According to google its 769 641.295 cubits.

Just type "190 nautical miles in cubits" into google. It can convert almost anything.

Hi Nico

Just out of curiousity whats with the fascination about the ether? You don't have objections to say relativity as well do you?

In images of fields of stars all the stars are essentially the same size, no size in fact, they are all point sources. We can't resolve individual stars with normal optics, though you can do it with large interferometers. (This page has some details. http://isi.ssl.berkeley.edu/research.htm ) The st...

I think the point cosmo is trying to make is this: We see ellipical galaxies in the nearby Universe, close enough for some that we know a great deal about them. It doesn't matter how far into space you look you still see Elliptical galaxies, there are elliptical galaxies observed at redshifts compar...

To amplify cosmos question. The normal boring galaxies he looks at can be examined spectroscopically. When you do that you always find that their ages are consistent with the age of the universe, in other words, if you see them as they were 7Gyr ago, because they are at a redshift of one, they alway...

cosmos not a moderator, that would be me. With regard to arps claims of correlations betwen quasars and foreground galaxies, these have been shown to be nothing more that random alignments, I'm afraid I don't have the references here, but if you check out the BadAstronomy and Universe Today discussi...

Indeed in clusters you get quite a lot of stars that float between the galaxies, not bound to any particular galaxy. They form what is known as the intracluster light. Some of the stars in the cluster may even have formed out there, but most probably have been thrown out of galaxies during mergers s...

Actually I see a whole bunch of bluish colored galaxys smeared in the arc shape characteristic of gravitational lensing. Is it possible that this amount of 'lensing' may be accounted for by the gravitational field of the central cluster of galaxys? It is not possible for only the luminous matter to...