Since the dawn of human history, we have looked up into the night sky and found patterns in the stars. Some of us saw animals, others saw gods and heroes, but we all agreed that they were greater than our simple existence. In this blog series, we will take a deeper look into the constellations that Astronomers use to map today’s night sky. We will look into the history of each of the 88 constellations and the stars and objects that form them, to discover more about our culture, and our connection with the universe. Our first constellation on the list is bright, large,...
Big stars tend to stick together. They all require incredibly dense regions in which to form, but once they do, they do a great job of blowing away and ionizing any other gas and dust in the vicinity. This is why nebulas in distant galaxies are great tracers of massive star formation. The bigger and hotter the star, the more UV light it produces, the more it ionized a gas cloud, the more we see gorgeous nebula. So it’s no surprise that when I look at the nebula below, I can guess that the central stars are huge, outweighing our...
Remember the big picture of Andromeda that showed 100 Million stars? That image resulted in a ton of new galaxy discoveries. Most of these new galaxies were once hidden beyond the Andromeda galaxy, but with the super high resolution image, astronomers and the public were able to look straight through and see far more distant objects. Most images of galaxies have what we call ‘field stars’ in them. These are some of the 400 Billion stars of the Milky Way that are far closer than the galaxy we are imaging. For this reason, galaxy images tend to look very cluttered...
A newly installed instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) has just taken it’s first images, what we call ‘first light’ in the astronomy world. The instrument, called GRAVITY, uses four different 8m telescopes to perform what we call ‘Baseline Interferometry.’ It is expected that tis is the instrument that will allow humanity to take the first ever direct picture of a black hole. Interferometry is a technique that uses multiple small telescopes all collecting light at a specific wavelength. These telescopes form a line that we call the baseline. The combination of these telescopes and...
After focussing all of its energy on taking science data during closest approach, New Horizons has been slowly but surely sending back the stream of information collected on the Pluto system. This long process of returning the data to Earth has meant periodic updates for humanity, and a rekindling of excitement for the newest secrets revealed about the dwarf planet. Here is a video of the region of Pluto imaged in high resolution, followed by some of the best still along the way. This is the closest and most detailed view of Pluto that humanity will have for decades. We...
With the recent story of the star with a debris ring potentially being a sign of extraterrestrial life (spoiler alert, it’s not aliens), I had to talk a bit more about debris rings in general around other stars. How can they exist? When we start to look at the number of worlds and the variability of objects and stars, it would be no surprise to find strange systems where recent interactions have produced all kinds of fascinating patterns. It’s another example of finding art in nature. A group of astronomers from the university of Warwick have directly imaged a debris...
The Milky Way is a decently big Galaxy. At 100,000 light years across, it is a full size barred spiral galaxy and distinctly different from what we would call ‘dwarf galaxies.’ But there are much larger galaxies in the universe. Most reside near the centre of a massive galaxy cluster and are the result of Billions of years of mergers and collisions. But some appear large because of their incredibly powerful release of energy. A new Galaxy discovered in the early universe by a team of astronomers from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics is an incredible 4 million light years...
Did you know that more than two-thirds of stars are part of multiple systems, where two or more stars orbit a common center of Gravity? This means that the Sun is one of the minority, being on its own. Most of the multiple systems out there are in fact double star systems, but some of them are triples and a few are quadruples. One such quadruple star system, known as DI Cha (in the chameleon constellation), was recently imaged by Hubble. The system lies in the southern constellation of Chameleon, about 520 light years away. The quadruple system is a...
192 Gigabytes. One picture. And I thought the 4 GB Andromeda shot was impressive (okay it still is). But this shot of the Milky Way, the largest single astronomical image ever compiled, is truly staggering in its detail. Showing multiple images taken with different filters, the massive compilation is the culmination of a 5-year observing program by the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. It’s amazing how much detail is shown, as you zoom in across the different features and truly get a sense for the magnitude of our Galaxy, and for the massive population of stars. I have yet to find a way to...
It’s like a birthday to an astronomer when new science data comes in. I will always love seeing new photos from the Pluto system, and with terabytes of data left to download from new horizons, we’re going to have a lot of presents over the next few months. Our latest gift gives us some new images from the flyby, showing surface features and atmosphere. These are stunning. These incredible photos show the surprising complexity of surface features on Pluto. The gorgeous variation in the surface is reminiscent of Mars, amazing considering the lack of sunlight this distant world receives. The long...
