APOD: NGC 7331 and Beyond (2014 Dec 18)

[Ann]

Appears that urban sprawl affects the universe. But at least there are lots of nice neighborhoods. Including today's APOD. A sense of width is fascinating too.

http://www.guidescope.net/galaxies/stephan-deer.htm

I know not what height would yield?

This is one of my favorite regions - using a field of view a little larger than the APOD picture, Stephen's Quintet is only a short pan away. These are the brightest visual targets in the area, and seeing all five members of the quintet can sometimes be tricky, but that puts about a dozen galaxies in a two field-of-view area!

We are actually not seeing Stephan's Quintet in today's APOD. But this fine image by Oleg Bryzgalov shows both NGC 7331 and the Deer Lick Group in the upper right-hand corner, as well as Stephan's Quintet at lower left.

Ann

[othermoons]

These posts have been some of the funniest, the more I read the more I laughed. Thanks APOD

[BDanielMayfield]

In the background, at about 11 o'clock I see a great 3-armed, barred galaxy. Does anyone know the designation of that particular galaxy? Any other, better photos of it anywhere?

That's NGC 7337. This is a pretty good picture of it. A quick search didn't turn up anything much better, if at all.

A three armed galaxy? Now that's just odd.

[Ron-Astro Pharmacist]

In the background, at about 11 o'clock I see a great 3-armed, barred galaxy. Does anyone know the designation of that particular galaxy? Any other, better photos of it anywhere?

That's NGC 7337. This is a pretty good picture of it. A quick search didn't turn up anything much better, if at all.

A three armed galaxy? Now that's just odd.

This should be Geck's post but I will put it out there so she doesn't have to bang her own skillful drum.

http://geckzilla.com/art/v/435

[Ann]

BDanielMayfield wrote:
A three armed galaxy? Now that's just odd.

M99 is another three-armed galaxy.

Admittedly there is a big difference between NGC 7337 and M99. M99 is has a comparatively small central part and large sprawling arms bursting with young blue stars and pink emission nebulas, whereas NGC 7337 is an old "settled-down" barred spiral with a large bulge of a belly and thin regular mostly non-starforming rather yellow arms.

Great pic, Geck, by the way, the one that Ron-Astro Pharmacist found and you have processed. The arms of the three armed galaxy are not entirely devoid of star formation, because they are somewhat knotty and obviously whiter in color than the galaxy's bar.

It is interesting, though, that "your" galaxy is strongly barred, just like NGC 7337. The very obvious three-armed morphology may only sprout from bars.

Ann

[ta152h0]

I hope the darkness moves slower than the speed of light, lest we be forever locked in darkness

[Chris Peterson]

I hope the darkness moves slower than the speed of light, lest we be forever locked in darkness

Everything points to eternal darkness being the ultimate fate of the Universe. Sorry about that.

[ta152h0]

not if humanity developes some really good CCD eyeballs

[Chris Peterson]

not if humanity developes some really good CCD eyeballs

Zero signal is a tough technological hurdle!

[Nitpicker]

" You obviously didn't notice the voids. "

I told you, scientists are funny people

Undeserving of such praise ... I'm not a scientist.

[-ariel-]

Can someone tell me how small of a telescope we're talking about to take a picture like this one. Thanks!

[geckzilla]

In response to Ron and Ann:
I looked around in Hubble's archive for three armed galaxies once I found that one you posted, Ron. They are more common once one begins to look for them, but the one, perfect three-armed galaxy is, as far as I've encountered, a unique specimen. If you look closely at NGC 7337, you'll notice that it still has a kind of biradial symmetry (is there a better word for this?) because, in my image below, #3 and #4 are analogous to one another. These sorts of quasi-three armed galaxies are the ones you usually see. Really wish I had a better picture of the perfect one.

Fuzzy question mark things I'm not sure are there or if I'm just imagining them there as part of the nuclear ring.

[Chris Peterson]

Can someone tell me how small of a telescope we're talking about to take a picture like this one. Thanks!

This is a large, bright object. It does not require a large telescope. Just a few centimeters would allow for a good image. Up to about 30 cm or so, there is an improvement in resolution. Beyond that, the atmosphere is what limits you. Otherwise, the advantage of aperture is simply exposure time. Collect more photons, you can image for a shorter time. What takes several hours with a largish amateur scope might take several tens of hours with a small scope. But that's a very manageable tradeoff.

Mainly, you need a solid mount that can track very accurately, and a good, low noise camera.

[geckzilla]

All for the relatively inexpensive price of about a car, right, Chris?

[Chris Peterson]

All for the relatively inexpensive price of about a car, right, Chris? ;)

Something like that.

However, a dedicated imager could make a shot like this with a few thousand dollars worth of equipment.

[BDanielMayfield]

BDanielMayfield wrote:
A three armed galaxy? Now that's just odd.

M99 is another three-armed galaxy.

Admittedly there is a big difference between NGC 7337 and M99. M99 is has a comparatively small central part and large sprawling arms bursting with young blue stars and pink emission nebulas, whereas NGC 7337 is an old "settled-down" barred spiral with a large bulge of a belly and thin regular mostly non-starforming rather yellow arms.

Great pic, Geck, by the way, the one that Ron-Astro Pharmacist found and you have processed. The arms of the three armed galaxy are not entirely devoid of star formation, because they are somewhat knotty and obviously whiter in color than the galaxy's bar.

It is interesting, though, that "your" galaxy is strongly barred, just like NGC 7337. The very obvious three-armed morphology may only sprout from bars.

Ann

My "that's just odd" quip was just a attempt at mild humor, but it appears that odd numbered armed spiral galaxies really are odd also in the strange or unusual sense of the word. Are there any five or even seven armed galaxies known to astronomers?

Bruce

[ta152h0]

Every radial engine ever produced has odd number of cylinders per crankshaft pin. Maybe our galaxy producers use the same math ( edited to correct spolling errors )

[Nitpicker]

Every radial engine ever produced has odd number of cylinders per crankshaft pin.

Not true. Only four-stroke radials have an odd number of cylinders per row, for smoothness. Two-stroke radials can have even numbers.

[BDanielMayfield]

I hope the darkness moves slower than the speed of light, lest we be forever locked in darkness

Everything points to eternal darkness being the ultimate fate of the Universe. Sorry about that.

Well, not everything. Everything open to discussion here, ok, but not absolutely Everything.

[Nitpicker]

I hope the darkness moves slower than the speed of light, lest we be forever locked in darkness

Everything points to eternal darkness being the ultimate fate of the Universe. Sorry about that.

Well, not everything. Everything open to discussion here, ok, but not absolutely Everything.

Bruce, not only are you talking about things outside the scope of The Starship, but outside the scope of the Universe. Go ahead and go nuts out there, but Chris's statement is correct. (Though unlike Chris to show such empathy. )

[geckzilla]

You guys.

[Boomer12k]

the fabric of the Universe is expanding at greater than the speed of light, and is therefore causally disconnected from us and forever beyond our ability to detect.

Is there any guess as to how much faster than light it expands? How can anything travel faster than light?

It is a common misconception that nothing can travel faster than light. No information can be transmitted at greater than c, and you can't accelerate anything with mass to a velocity greater than c with respect to its original point. But neither of those are happening in the case of the expansion of the Universe.

Material beyond the edge of our observable universe could be moving at many times c with respect to us. How many times depends on the actual size of the Universe, which is probably many orders of magnitude greater than the size of our observable universe (and is possibly infinitely large).

There do APPEAR to be galaxies that move closer to the S.O.L...Galaxies, IF ANY, beyond what we see as the "edge of the Universe", or outside the Universe, could be seen "in red shift"...as going faster than light...but I think that would be an illusion...because of the MASS of said Galaxy or Material...

But "Material" by its very definition has Mass.....Therefore....

If our Universe began with the energy in the 11th dimension....then that energy would be outside us...but OUR energy does not exceed C, at least not in a vacuum,....THUS...if the energy of the 11 dimension IS the same as our own....as we came from it....we can extrapolate that it too....has this limit....and ANYTHING ELSE made from said Energy.

The only thing I see as having the potential to move greater than C...is the Spirit....if Consciousness could conceive itself to be somewhere else...and actually BE there...then that would be faster than light...if you could conceive of being at the edge of the galaxy, and beyond, in an INSTANT...and if you could actually BE there....then that would be FTL in the extreme...
So...if there is ANYTHING outside this Universe that goes FTL...it is Spirit, and an argument therefore, for the existence of God....(I know, I know, not a topic for discussion here, I only mention it in passing as the subject of conversation has brought up the concept)....

But "MATERIAL"? I don't think so...even energy...light is actually an EFFECT...not a cause...the cause is a reaction that "gives off" the light....Like with a Star...Light would therefore be a "potential" in the 11th dimension...not necessarily actual.

Tachyons are still theoretical...and most data and experiments have not proven they exist.
From Wikipedia on Tachyons....
"Despite theoretical arguments against the existence of faster-than-light particles, experiments have been conducted to search for them. No compelling evidence for their existence has been found. In September 2011, it was reported that a tau neutrino had travelled faster than the speed of light in a major release by CERN; however, later updates from CERN on the OPERA project indicate that the faster-than-light readings were resultant from "a faulty element of the experiment's fibre optic timing system".[7]"

:---[===] *

[BDanielMayfield]

Everything points to eternal darkness being the ultimate fate of the Universe. Sorry about that.

Well, not everything. Everything open to discussion here, ok, but not absolutely Everything.

Bruce, not only are you talking about things outside the scope of The Starship, but outside the scope of the Universe.

That is correct.

Go ahead and go nuts out there, but Chris's statement is correct.

Go ahead and think I'm nuts nit, if you wish. I understand the physical basis for Chris's statement. If this physical cosmos really is all there is, then "heat death" is a reasonable forecast for the Universe. But I'd rather not abandon all hope, so I won't.

Bruce

[Ann]

In response to Ron and Ann:
I looked around in Hubble's archive for three armed galaxies once I found that one you posted, Ron. They are more common once one begins to look for them, but the one, perfect three-armed galaxy is, as far as I've encountered, a unique specimen. If you look closely at NGC 7337, you'll notice that it still has a kind of biradial symmetry (is there a better word for this?) because, in my image below, #3 and #4 are analogous to one another. These sorts of quasi-three armed galaxies are the ones you usually see. Really wish I had a better picture of the perfect one.

NGC7337.jpg

Barred spirals often have a small bright ring surrounding their nucleus like NGC 1097 and sometimes an outer ring surrounding the entire bar, again like NGC 1097 or M95. But sometimes this outer ring may be two overlapping spiral arms. This is obviously the case in NGC 1300. Note that the arm emanating at the bar end at 3 o'clock shows a tendency of breaking into two arms at 9 o'clock, which just might make this galaxy an incipient three-armed spiral. The symmetry of NGC 1073 is suggestive of a severely broken-up ring around the bar as well as of two spiral arms emanating from the bar, one of which is possibly breaking into two.

In NGC 1073, spiral arms emanate from both bar ends. But a third arm appears to have insinuated itself near the bar end at 3 o'clock. The arrows in the picture point at distant background quasars.

Ann

[Chris Peterson]

If this physical cosmos really is all there is, then "heat death" is a reasonable forecast for the Universe. But I'd rather not abandon all hope, so I won't.

You mean you're worried about what will happen to yourself or your descendents a few trillion years from now? I think you can probably put those concerns out of your mind.