M83: The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy
Color Composite: Davide De Martin (Skyfactory)
Credit: European Southern Observatory Science Archive
Posted on 09/27/2008 7:38:55 AM PDT by sig226
Explanation: Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name of the Southern Pinwheel. But reddish star forming regions that dot the sweeping arms highlighted in this sparkling color composite also suggest another nickname, The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy Centaurus A. The core of M83 itself is bright at x-ray energies, showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. The sharp image, based on archival data from the European Southern Observatory's Wide Field Imager camera, also features spiky foreground Milky Way stars and distant background galaxies.
God Bless America! :)
M83 only 12 light years away ping. What a beautiful neighbor.
All that beautiful coral colored mass is being sucked into the white hot central doom.
The galaxy is but a hurricane over the surface of the darkness of the ocean below.
Astronomically, a blink of the eye.
Nice home page. I wanted to take the “Brainy Girl” test (even though I have the other equipment) but the link is busted.
I find it quite striking that this is the same shape of a lot of things on Earth. Hurricanes, swirling bathtub drains, etc.
It must be a factor of motion. Any physics guys out there?
I find it quite striking that this is the same shape of a lot of things on Earth. Hurricanes, swirling bathtub drains, etc.
It must be a factor of motion. Any physics guys out there?
On earth hurricanes and typhoons spin due to the Coriolis Effect. The spin of the earth and difference in distance from the equator cause an inertial force on storms that causes storms north of the equator to spin counter-clockwisw and storms south of the equator to spin clockwise.
For galaxies I think the spirals are like planets orbiting a more massive obgect. Different things can cause gasses and dust to concentrate in bands where star formation will be more intense. I have often wondered if galaxies tend to spin in a similar direction or if they are completely random.
Do all galaxies spin??
It looks like they may not all spin. One galaxy form is the elliptical galaxy which does not seem to show evidense of spinning. Absence of spinning may indicate that there is not enough motion away from the galaxy center to cause orbital motion, and therefore maybe not much life before being consumed by a black hole. Spiral galaxies are spinning disk-shaped groups of stars with curved arms of star groups. Some galaxies with unusual shapes are known as peculiar galaxies, and are thought to result from disruption by the gravitational pull of neighboring galaxies or possibly from the merging of two or more galaxies.
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