A colorful view of the Milky Way based on a new 3-D structure created by astronomers. "Due to our position within the disk it is difficult to identify the detailed structure of the inner galaxy," the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics said in a statement. Credit: MPE
Thanks to a new analysis of pictures obtained by a telescope in Chile, astronomers are gaining a better understanding of how the Milky Way formed and how our home galaxy has changed over the years.
Here’s how the project worked:
– The European Southern Observatory’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) 4.1-meter telescope took near-infrared pictures of the bulge of the Milky Way during the Variables in the Via Lactea public survey.
– Using the public data, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) created a three-dimensional star map of the inner regions of the Milky Way.
Milky Way. Image credit: NASA
– Their findings were that the bulge in the center is shaped like a box or a peanut, with characteristics such as an “elongated bar”. It’s the first time such an accurate 3-D map of the inner universe was constructed, the science team said.
“This indicates that the Milky Way was originally a pure disk of stars, which then formed a thin bar, before buckling into the box/peanut shape seen today,” MPE stated. “The new map can be used for more detailed studies of the dynamics and evolution of our Milky Way.”
Among other conclusions, this helps confirm the fairly recent finding that the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, rather than just a spiral galaxy.
The Milky Way arches over Jim Edgar Panther Creek State Park in Central Illinois. Credit and copyright: Ben Romang.
Amateur astronomers from Illinois frequently venture out to Jim Edgar Panther Creek State Park, a 26-square mile conservation area of prairie and forest, famous for having the darkest skies in the state. But of course, lots of folks head out to the park to enjoy other things like the picturesque landscapes, the wildlife, and the solitude.
This past week my friend Ben Romang went to do some camping at Panther Creek, and with a borrowed camera, wanted to make his first attempt at photographing the night sky. He was hoping to nab some Perseid meteors, but instead was overwhelmed with the beauty of the expansive sky overhead. For his first try, I think he did a pretty good job of capturing the view, don’t you?
Ben used a Canon 7D, with an EF 24-70mm lens.
If you’d like to see these amazing dark skies for yourself, the perfect time would be during the annual Illinois Dark Sky Star Party, held every year by the local astronomy group in my area, the Sangamon Astronomical Society. It’s a great event, with a wonderful observing site, lots of room for camping, great food, interesting speakers (so claims their website — I’ve spoken there a few times!), and very friendly folks who are passionate about amateur astronomy. This year the Dark Skies Party is October 3-6, 2013. Find out more about the event here.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
Fishing Boats Meet the Milky Way on the Isle of Wight (south of England) on May 16, 2013. Credit and copyright: Chad Powell.
We’ve shared many images of the Milky Way in our featured photos from astrophotographers, but this might be one of the most vibrant I’ve seen! The blue of the sky and sea is incredible and almost pulsates with its stunning azure color. Photographer Chad Powell explained on Flickr: “Where I live on the Isle of Wight (south of England) is known to have minimal light pollution but I only ever shot the Milky Way from my back garden. I decided to finally trek it down to my local beach. The Milky Way was so bright in the sky, it was breathtaking! The lights on the left are from fishing boats tens of miles out to sea.”
Simply beautiful, especially if you are a blue-o-file like I am!
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
A still from the new timelapse, 'Borrego Stardance' by Gavin Heffernan/Sunchaser Pictures.
Just outside of Borrego Springs, California, monsters lurk. Life-size metal statues of dinosaurs, dragons, and wooly mammoths stand among giant insects, birds and several other creatures. But the 600,000 acre Anzo-Borrego State Park is also an astronomer’s dream, since it is one of four communities in the world to be classified a “Dark Sky Community” by the International Dark Sky Association.
Timelapse maven Gavin Heffernan from Sunchaser Pictures has now combined these monsters and the beautiful dark sky for his latest astronomical timelapse video, Borrego Stardance. It’s an unusual and fanciful look at the night sky –- where else can you see dragons and star trails at the same time? Watch below — and crank the volume for added effect!
“Despite the grueling 112 degree temperatures, my team and I had an amazing shoot, with some of the clearest Milky Way footage we’ve ever captured” Gavin wrote Universe Today via email, “as well as some exciting creature-filled star trails, and more experiments with “Starscaping” (switching from stars to trails mid-shot).”
Mt. Fuji in Japan as a 'galactic volcano' with the Milky Way 'spewing' above and climbers with flashlights appearing like lava. Credit and copyright: Yuga Kurita.
It is a Japanese tradition to climb Mt. Fuji at night to be able to watch sunrise from the peak of the volcano in the morning. And so at night, climbers use flashlights to make their way to the summit. This inspired photographer Yuga Kurita to create a truly stunning image that makes the iconic Mt. Fuji appear like a galactic volcano.
“When I arrived at Fujiyoshida in Yamanashi Prefecture, I saw people climbing up Mt. Fuji with flash lights and I thought they looked like lava streams,” Kurita explained on G+. “Then I came up with this composition, since nowadays, the Milky Way appears vertically in the sky so probably I could liken Mt. Fuji to an imaginary galactic volcano, that is, people climbing up with torches are lava streams and the Milky Way is the volcano smoke.”
Kurita said he checked out maps to find out the best potential spots where the image could be taken for full effect, and then spent a whole day driving and hiking around Mt. Fuji to check out the candidate spots. “I eventually found out the right spot for the composition and visited the spot three consecutive nights,” he said. “The result is this photograph. I’m quite happy with the outcome.”
Amazing and truly spectacular!
Thanks to Yuga Kurita for allowing Universe Today to post this image. You can see more of his work at G+ and on Facebook.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
An artist's conception of how common exoplanets are throughout the Milky Way Galaxy. Image Credit: Wikipedia
A new study suggests that the number of habitable exoplanets within the Milky Way alone may reach 60 billion.
Previous research performed by a team at Harvard University suggested that there is one Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf star. But researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University have now extended the habitable zone and doubled this estimate.
The research team, lead by Dr. Jun Yang considered one more variable in their calculations: cloud cover. Most exoplanets are tidally locked to their host stars – one hemisphere continually faces the star, while one continuously faces away. These tidally locked planets have a permanent dayside and a permanent nightside.
One would expect the temperature gradient between the two to be very high, as the dayside is continuously receiving stellar flux, while the nightside is always in darkness. Computer simulations that take into account cloud cover show that this is not the case.
The dayside is covered by clouds, which lead to a “stabilizing cloud feedback” on climate. It has a higher cloud albedo (more light is reflected off the clouds) and a lower greenhouse effect. The presence of clouds actually causes the dayside to be much cooler than expected.
“Tidally locked planets have low enough surface temperatures to be habitable,” explains Jang in his recently published paper. Cloud cover is so effective it even extends the habitable zone to twice the stellar flux. Planets twice as close to their host star are still cool enough to be habitable.
But these new statistics do not apply to just a few stars. Red dwarfs “represent about ¾ of the stars in the galaxy, so it applies to a huge number of planets,” Dr. Abbot, co-author on the paper, told Universe Today. It doubles the number of planets previously thought habitable throughout the entire galaxy.
Not only is the habitable zone around red dwarfs much larger, red dwarfs also live for much longer periods of time. In fact, the Universe is not old enough for any of these long-living stars to have died yet. This gives life the amount of time necessary to form. After all, it took human beings 4.5 billions years to appear on Earth.
Another study we reported on earlier also revised and extrapolated the habitable zone around red dwarf stars.
Future observations will verify this model by measuring the cloud temperatures. On the dayside, we will only be able to see the high cool clouds. A planet resembling this model will therefore look very cold on the dayside. In fact, “a planet that does show the cloud feedback will look hotter on the nightside than the dayside,” explains Abbot.
This effect will be testable with the James Webb Space Telescope. All in all, the Milky Way is likely to be teeming with life.
Photographer Graham Gaunt recently spent a week on the beautiful island of St. Agnes, Isle of Scilly during an unusual stretch of clear weather. “I spent every night awake dragging my gear out at dusk and returning to sleep at dawn,” Graham wrote on Vimeo. “No matter how much I thought I had planned out each shot the unraveling of the nights events always brought new and different surprises.”
Thanks to Graham for capturing and sharing his wonderful night views and experiences!
The text of William H. Waller, an astronomer and author, was in the midst of a discussion of a kind of organic molecule called PAHs, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. As I was reading about the Spitzer Space Telescope’s discoveries in this field, the last sentence in the paragraph struck me:
“On Earth, PAHs are as familiar to us as the mouth-watering aromas of a barbecued hamburger, the sweetly acrid odors of burning tobacco, and the choking fumes behind a diesel bus,” Waller wrote. “If we had big enough nostrils, what would our home galaxy smell like?”
I’m never going to read about PAHs again without wanting to run to that greasy joint nearby my place. Or, I guess, run in the opposite direction from the nearest bus stop.
A digital all-sky mosaic of our view of the Milky Way from Earth, assembled from more than 3,000 individual CCD frames. Credit: Axel Mellinger.
Waller’s book is designed as a reference guide for those with a serious interest in astronomy, but who perhaps are just starting to think about taking it in school. Another audience could be the serious amateur astronomer wanting to understand more about telescopic targets.
While not light cottage reading, Waller isn’t afraid to throw in references to popular culture or to drop in humor now and then, much like a kindly Astronomy 101 professor trying to snap your attention back when it might be wandering.
On that note, this illustration in the book (with some important context) may be my favorite astronomy textbook image of all time. It’s another example of how science can, kinda sorta, meet science fiction.
You will find Star Trek references in this book, we promise you. (Paramount Pictures)
The breadth of material Waller covers is astonishing. One 43-page chapter is essentially a history of how we looked at the sky mythologically, philosophically and of course scientifically — a feat that is more interesting when you realize a goodly number of those pages are actually in-context, interesting illustrations.
The book’s bulk, though, looks to summarize astronomical phenomena. It’s definitely not for the beginning reader; for example, the term “nebula” is referred to several times before finally being defined some pages into the book. But if you know what Waller is aiming at, you’ll learn quite a bit.
The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram.
The book purports to be about galaxies, but much of it is also devoted to what I think of as hacking the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram showing the types of stars in relation to each other.
Three full chapters are devoted to star birth, the lives of stars and stellar afterlives (y’know, supernovae and the like.) This makes perfect sense as galaxies are collections of stars, so it is only by studying these individual members that we can truly appreciate what a galaxy is about.
The more serious reader will be pleased to see equations included (such as calculating parallax) and a detailed explanation of Drake’s Equation showing the factors behind the probability of finding extraterrestrial life.
So to sum up: definitely not for the person with a nascent interest in astronomy, but a valuable reference for those looking to learn about it seriously. As a space journalist, I’ll definitely keep this book on my shelf.
A 12-photo panoramic of the milky way arching over Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona. Credit and copyright: Sean Parker/Sean Parker Photography.
The desert provides some of the most stunning landscapes and skycapes, as evidenced by two recent astrophotos from Universe Today readers. The gorgeous lead image by Sean Parker of Tucson, Arizona is a 12-image panoramic view of the Milky Way arching over Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona. Sean noted on Flickr that if you live in Tucson, you can see this photo in a 12×36 frame at Black Crown Coffee Co for the next 3 weeks during his Astrophotography Exhibition. If you go, tell him Universe Today sent you!
The stunning image below is a frame from a timelapse being worked on by Ken Brandon of California. The image was taken on June 9, 2013 and features ancient Bristlecone pines in the foreground, with the arch of the Milky Way visible in the sky:
Ancient Bristlecone pines with an even more ancient Milky Way in the background. Credit and copyright: Ken Brandon.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
A rocky region of Portinho da Arrábida, Portugal, with the center of Milky Way behind it, visible at dawn. Credit and copyright: Miguel Claro
Ever seen the arc of the Milky Way in daylight? Astrophotographer Miguel Claro came as close as possible by capturing this view of ‘Via Lactea’ at dawn on May 11, 2013, with the stars of Saggitarius and Scorpius clearly visible, while the sky is slowly turning blue. The image was taken with a rocky region of the resort area of Portinho da Arrábida, in Portugal, visible in the foreground. Also visible is the Red Supergiant star Antares.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
