BTW, if you do a web image search for "Milky Way Galaxy Map", there's a hi-res version of the National Geographic map available!
Posted on 05/06/2020 9:14:35 AM PDT by plain talk
In the night sky, far south of the equator, there’s a curious collection of faint constellations embedded in the tapestry of stars. They do not bear the names of myths and legends, because the ancient Greeks couldn’t see them from the Northern Hemisphere. These constellations were charted later, in the mid-18th century, by a French astronomer who sailed south ...
And just like a cluttered attic, this corner of sky has been hiding something truly remarkable.
Astronomers have discovered a black hole in one of the constellations, the suitably named Telescopium. At just 1,000 light-years away, the black hole is closer to our solar system than any other that astronomers have found to date. A thousand light-years might sound distant to us, but in cosmic proportions, it’s very close.
“On the scale of the Milky Way, it’s in our backyard,” Thomas Rivinius, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile who led the new research, told me. “Almost on our doorstep.”
For comparison, consider some of the best-known black holes in astronomy, the ones usually intriguing enough to make headlines. The black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is more than 25,000 light-years away, and the black hole that astronomers captured in unprecedented detail last year lies 55 million light-years away, in another galaxy altogether. This one, by contrast, is so close that, on a clear night in the southern hemisphere, far from light pollution, the pair of stars that orbit the black hole can be seen with the naked eye. From here, the stars appear as a single pinprick of light.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
But I found it interesting we had a black hole this close.
Nah, she ain’t gonna ru................. Oh?
I read the headline and thought that the DemonRats had replaced Biden with Big Mike.
Guess we better get our ass in gear and invent warp drive!
In first with Klingons around Uranus.
Thanks for posting this, Plain Talk. Modernly, “The Atlantic” is generally a sorry magazine. It’s remarkable this informative, concise, and well written work appeared within its pages.
Good article and interesting graphics.
Well then we no longer need to worry about viruses or any other diseases I reckon. 8>)
Leeloo will save us
...and, I was reaching for my Preparation H.
“The black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is more than 25,000 light-years away...”
Noob here! I didn’t realize we were a full 25000 LY from the center of our own galaxy. I’m curious: So, is the new black hole 1000 LY away from the planet Earth still inside the Milky Way? Or is it 1000 LY from the edge of the Milky Way?
Unserious follow-up: I need to know when to start worrying and posting my status on FaceBook.
Would make a good movie:
“The Day the Earth got Sucked into a Black Hole”
Sorry the fear of coronavirus is fading, we are bringing out the Killer Hornets!
What happened to the giant killer hornets in terms of what to worry about?
6. Do all stars become black holes?
Only stars with very large masses can become black holes. Our Sun, for example, is not massive enough to become a black hole. Four billion years from now when the Sun runs out of the available nuclear fuel in its core, our Sun will die a quiet death. Stars of this type end their history as white dwarf stars. More massive stars, such as those with masses of over 20 times our Sun’s mass, may eventually create a black hole. When a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel it can no longer sustain its own weight and begins to collapse. When this occurs the star heats up and some fraction of its outer layer, which often still contains some fresh nuclear fuel, activates the nuclear reaction again and explodes in what is called a supernova. The remaining innermost fraction of the star, the core, continues to collapse. Depending on how massive the core is, it may become either a neutron star and stop the collapse or it may continue to collapse into a black hole. The dividing mass of the core, which determines its fate, is about 2.5 solar masses. It is thought that to produce a core of 2.5 solar masses the ancestral star should begin with over 20 solar masses. A black hole formed from a star is called a stellar black hole.
https://history.amazingspace.org/resources/explorations/blackholes/teacher/sciencebackground.html
“I didn’t realize we were a full 25000 LY from the center of our own galaxy. I’m curious: So, is the new black hole 1000 LY away from the planet Earth still inside the Milky Way? Or is it 1000 LY from the edge of the Milky Way?”
Yeah sometimes I read up on this stuff and remind myself of the sheer distances involved.
MW has a diameter of 150,000 to 200,000 light years.
The nearest real galaxy is Andromeda which is 2.5 million LY away.
This black hole is 1000 LY from the solar system. It is not in the center of the Milky Way. I had grown to sort of accept the idea that black holes lived in the centers of galaxies. But this one doesn’t and there are probably others like it.
Dang! I just bought some green bananas.
Does anybody who is same believe anything published by The Atlantic?
“Same” = sane.
“The Day the Earth got Sucked into a Black Hole” between the year January 20. 2009- January 20, 2017 =)
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