Not The Candy Bar: Milky Way

[dgridley]

From a pretty interesting article:

When you got out on a dark night, you can see thousands of stars. But the Milky Way has two hundred billion stars in it. You’re only seeing a tiny tiny fraction of the number of stars tooling around the galaxy. In fact, with only a handful of exceptions, the most distant stars you can readily see are 1000 light years away. Worse, most stars are so faint that they are invisible much closer than that; the Sun is too dim to see from farther than about 60 light years away… and the Sun is pretty bright compared to most stars. So the little bubble of stars we can see around us is just a drop in the ocean of the Milky Way.

For more about the Milky Way:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/03/12/ten-things-you-dont-know-about-the-milky-way-galaxy/

The Universe is no accident :imho: and it's even bigger than we can imagine.

I can remember crossing the Everglades as a kid in Florida and looking up into the night sky. There was virtually no light pollution then (I was crossing on Alligator Alley) and the sky was white with stars. For someone who's never had the opportunity to see a sky like that, I can tell you it will beat any other thing you can see on this planet for sheer awesomeness and beauty.

 

[yandig]

I am a big astronomy buff, so I enjoyed your post, Dave. When we see what we call the Milky Way, we are actually looking toward the bright center of our galaxy. Our solar system resides about halfway out on one of the galaxy's spiral arms.

With light pollution what it is, it's getting harder to find really dark skies, unless you are miles away from civilization. In the northern hemisphere, there is one prominent galaxy that you can easily see with the naked eye under the right conditions. The Andromeda galaxy (neighbor to the Milky Way) appears as a fuzzy spot in the constellation of the same name. It's a little bigger than the Milky Way, with over a TRILLION stars. It's amazing that we can see an object that's 2 million light-years away.

 

[dgridley]

I agree and when you consider the astronomically large number of galaxies composed of trillions and trillions of stars, it's kinda hard not to feel humbled.. you also begin to realize that the existence of intelligent life existing elsewhere is almost a certainty given the sheer volume of "opportunities" for life that must exist. In fact the odds are that not only does life exist, but an exact duplicate of Earth exists somewhere.. hard to fathom.

Gives even more meaning to the country song God Must Be Busy

 

[yandig]

Yes, I've met my exact duplicate on the planet Zoltar 5...he's a real jerk!

 

[dgridley]

Crab Nebula:

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/wallpaper/pr2005037a/

 

[Barrucadu]

Can someone please explain to me how the Crab Nebula looks like a crab?

 

[liquidcherry]

"Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.
Her five year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life
and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before."


"Beam me up Scotty!"

:hi:

Cheers,

Frank

 

[monaco]

Yes, I've met my exact duplicate on the planet Zoltar 5...he's a real jerk!

That's my fault, sorry. My duplicate picked on him alot in school.