Explanation: No, hamburgers are not this big. What is pictured is a sharp telescopic views of a magnificent edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 3628 show a puffy galactic disk divided by dark dust lanes. Of course, this deep galactic portrait puts some astronomers in mind of its popular moniker, The Hamburger Galaxy. The tantalizing island universe is about 100,000 light-years across and 35 million light-years away in the northern springtime constellation Leo. NGC 3628 shares its neighborhood in the local Universe with two other large spirals M65 and M66 in a grouping otherwise known as the Leo Triplet. Gravitational interactions with its cosmic neighbors are likely responsible for the extended flare and warp of this spiral's disk.
love hamburgers. Speciaally those made with real meat and crispy onions, bathed in ketchup and sauced with soe mustard. When I was still well, we used to go to Grand Coulee and camp out in August to see the Perseids.
heehaw wrote:When I was a boy galaxies were "things" (as stars sill are). But today, galaxies are "clumps of leaves," swirling in flowing streams (of dark matter).
heehaw wrote:When I was a boy galaxies were "things" (as stars sill are). But today, galaxies are "clumps of leaves," swirling in flowing streams (of dark matter).
To me, galaxies still are "the thing"!
Ann
That's the exact way I feel about planetary nebulae!
Yes Galaxies are amazing! So Immense....So Distant.....So frustrating! We are able to explore them with Telescopes & Arithmetic.....while the nearest STAR is so beyond our current capabilities to reach by "Man".The Universe is just a BIG tease!
sillyworm wrote:Yes Galaxies are amazing! So Immense....So Distant.....So frustrating! We are able to explore them with Telescopes & Arithmetic.....while the nearest STAR is so beyond our current capabilities to reach by "Man".
The second nearest star?
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory https://www.cloudbait.com
sillyworm wrote:
Yes Galaxies are amazing! So Immense....So Distant.....So frustrating! We are able to explore them with Telescopes & Arithmetic.....while the nearest STAR is so beyond our current capabilities to reach by "Man".
sillyworm wrote:
Yes Galaxies are amazing! So Immense....So Distant.....So frustrating! We are able to explore them with Telescopes & Arithmetic.....while the nearest STAR is so beyond our current capabilities to reach by "Man".
The second nearest star?
Both...if a round trip is planned.
A robotic mission is also an example of man reaching someplace... and no return is required.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory https://www.cloudbait.com
sillyworm wrote:Yes Galaxies are amazing! So Immense....So Distant.....So frustrating! We are able to explore them with Telescopes & Arithmetic.....while the nearest STAR is so beyond our current capabilities to reach by "Man".
Chris Peterson wrote:
A robotic mission is also an example of man reaching someplace... and no return is required.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=reach wrote:
reach (v.) Old English ræcan, reccan "reach out, stretch out, extend, hold forth," also "succeed in touching, succeed in striking; address, speak to," from West Germanic *raikjan "stretch out the hand", from Proto-Germanic *raikijanau, perhaps from PIE root *reig- "to stretch out" (source also of Sanskrit rjyati "he stretches himself," riag "torture" (by racking). Shakespeare uses the now-obsolete past tense form raught.
<<Solar Probe Plus or Solar Probe+, previously NASA Solar Probe, is a planned robotic spacecraft to probe the outer corona of the Sun. It will approach to within 8.5 solar radii (5.9 million kilometers) to the 'surface' (photosphere) of the Sun. The project was announced as a new mission start in the fiscal 2009 budget year. On May 1, 2008 Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory announced it will design and build the spacecraft, on a schedule to launch it in 2015. The launch date has since been pushed back to 2018, with the Delta IV Heavy as the launch vehicle.
Early conceptual designs for the Solar Probe mission used a gravity assist maneuver at Jupiter to cancel the orbital speed of the probe launched from Earth, in order to drop onto a trajectory close to the Sun. The Solar Probe Plus mission design simplifies this trajectory by using repeated gravity assists at Venus, to incrementally decrease the orbital perihelion to achieve multiple passes to approximately 8.5 solar radii.
The mission is designed to survive the harsh environment near the Sun, where the incident solar intensity is approximately 520 times the intensity at Earth orbit, by the use of a solar shadow-shield. The solar shield, at the front of the spacecraft, is made of reinforced carbon-carbon composite. The spacecraft systems, and the scientific instruments, are located in the umbra of the shield, where direct light from the sun is fully blocked. The primary power for the mission will be by use of a dual system of photovoltaic arrays. A primary photovoltaic array, used for the portion of the mission outside 0.25 AU, is retracted behind the shadow shield during the close approach to the Sun, and a much smaller secondary array powers the spacecraft through closest approach. This secondary array uses pumped-fluid cooling to maintain operating temperature.
As the probe passes around the Sun, it will achieve a velocity of up to 200 km/s making it by any measure, the fastest manmade object ever, almost three times faster than the current record holder, Helios 2.
Scientific goals
Determine the structure and dynamics of the magnetic fields at the sources of solar wind.
Trace the flow of energy that heats the corona and accelerates the solar wind.
Determine what mechanisms accelerate and transport energetic particles.
Explore dusty plasma near the Sun and its influence on solar wind and energetic particle formation.
sillyworm wrote:Yes Galaxies are amazing! So Immense....So Distant.....So frustrating! We are able to explore them with Telescopes & Arithmetic.....while the nearest STAR is so beyond our current capabilities to reach by "Man".
The second nearest star?
Yes That is correct.
Even the nearest star is somewhat hard to reach.
The Golden Apples of the Sun is a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury. In the title story, a manned spaceship is diving close enough to the Sun to scope up a sample of its outer layers and bring this sample back to the Earth to be studied. At least that is how I remember the story myself, because I groaned aloud at the stupidity of sending people to literally dive into (the outer layers of) the Sun to scope up a sample of it! Ray Bradbury must never have heard of spectroscopy!
By the way, interesting stuff about that planned (unmanned) solar probe, Art.
Postby Visual_Astronomer » Wed May 03, 2017 11:52 pm
I was looking at this very galaxy this past Sunday night. It's the faintest member of the "Trio in Leo", but it looks a great deal like the photo - distinct dust lane, wide ends, etc. Very nice picture!
I believe we can excuse Ray for a few misconceptions...the fine writer that he was.Hee Hee I have been a SF fan since I was 8 or earlier...Ray was a big influence on my future love of reading books & searching for answers.
starsurfer wrote:NGC 3628: not suitable for vegetarians and vegans!
Also this is called the Sandwich Galaxy.
I think it has a ionized Ha outflow, which isn't visible with amateur equipment?
That it does. This old processed image (so old it was scanned from a 35mm slide shot off a monitor...) is a pseudocolor display of an H-alpha image with the starlight continuum subtracted. The disk star-forming regions are at the bottom, with the starburst outflow visible above that disk component.
Now I can! Thanks to schmeah, Derek Santiago, and his photo collection of galaxies, I became aware of NGC 4762.
Of course, NGC 4762 is very different from NGC 3628, since the Hamburger Galaxy of Leo is very dusty and meaty, whereas NGC 4762 has been on a diet for a long time and is very ethereal and slender.
NGC 3628: The Hamburger Galaxy
