Astronomers Release Stunning Images of Nearby Galaxies
Newsweek reports astronomers released images from the most wide-ranging ultraviolet light survey of nearby star-forming galaxies to date.
The project, known as LEGUS (Legacy Extra Galactic UV Survey), researchers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, and the Advanced Camera to capture both ultraviolet and visible images of 50 neighboring galaxies, which lie within a 60 million-light-year radius of Earth, over the course of a year.
The astronomers captured images of around 8,000 young star clusters, or groups of stars which are gravitationally bound, and catalogued 39 million individual stars, ranging in age from one billion to several billion years old.
The scientists hope data collected by the survey will provide new insights into the complexities of star formation and galaxy evolution.
“There has never before been a star cluster [catalog] and a stellar catalog that included observations in ultraviolet light,” Daniela Calzetti, an astronomer from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who led the LEGUS survey, said in a statement.
“Ultraviolet light is a major tracer of the youngest and hottest star populations, which astronomers need to derive the ages of stars and get a complete stellar history. The synergy of the two catalogs combined offers an unprecedented potential for understanding star formation,” she said.
Even today, with access to unprecedented astronomical data, astronomers still do not understand many aspects of how stars form. The new findings may help to change that, as the data will be made available to researchers who want to investigate how star formation occurred in either one specific galaxy or set of galaxies.
One of the main issues that the survey may help to address is the connection between star formation and the major structures that make up a galaxy, such as spiral arms.
Seems NASA is back in the game after cutbacks imposed by the previous administration. Manned asteroid exploration and both robot and manned missions to Mars are in the offing. Good to see you back, NASA.
Category: It's science!
I suddenly feel very insignificant…
Love looking at those pics tho!
I was a space nut as a kid, checked out every book on the topic in my elementary school’s library. I still remember the moment I realized how small our world is in the grand scheme of things. The book showed a full double pages of dots. Each dot representing one galaxy within which are billions of stars surrounded by trillions more planets, asteroids, and moons.
Everything we know and have ever been is like a speck of cosmic dust.
Well, it could all be simulated, you know, though we wouldn’t still be able to tell the difference.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/
The curmudgeon alchemist flat earth subscriber in me says, how can I possibly dispute the scientists/astrophysicists when I didn’t make it past advanced Algebra in college.
Why should I care about images of celestial systems that died out trillions of years ago but we’re just now seeing them.
Why should I care when it is absolutely impossible to travel to those places?
I could make up all kinds of stuff, get government grants and just take 10% and hire graphic artists and make up the rest.
But I mentioned that to my uncle years ago – who is a space buff – and he said, look at all the technology and inventions that have happened as a result of our exploration.
At the very least, there are so many peripheral benefits employing all of the support personnel in the supply chain.
Not unlike the military where closing an installation down can send entire cities into black holes.
I remember looking thru encyclopedias and dreaming about space.
And I do enjoy the images.
Lurker:
You are not insignificant. You are a free man with a soul and free will.
Very significant!
There is a plan to send a remote-operated helo drone to Mars on one of these upcoming missions.
I’m hoping the drone will be able to find evidence of the Martian cabbage that Heinlein described in ‘Red Planet’.
Here’s some info on the current mission that is on its way to Mars – InSight:
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/
And it has two “friends” following her to The Red Planet:
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/05/17/first-interplanetary-cubesats-already-setting-records-in-deep-space/
Am I the only one wondering why a helicopter in an atmosphere too thin to even breathe? Must have a hell of a set of rotors, seems to me quite a few of our choppers can’t function in the higher altitudes in Afghanistan.
No Rescue Swimmer, either.
Here’s the answer to the rotor question – 3.9 feet from tip-to-tip:
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/05/14/helicopter-to-accompany-nasas-next-mars-rover-to-red-planet/
Much lower gravity.
My head hurts.
Awww, poor thing. Just run it under a cold tap.
I told you, beer is better than whiskey.
Where is Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Capt. Video and his Video Rangers when you need them.
They all had to go on unpaid leave due to funding constraints/government sequestration during the Obozo administration.
Remember like they said in The Right Stuff, “No Bucks, – No Buck Rogers.”
They were approached by Mother Thing when she dropped Kip and Peewee off at Peewee’s parents’ house near Rutgers, after the Kids saved the planet from Wormface and his kind. I’m telling you, a trip to the Magellanic Clouds is nothing to sneeze at. And Mother Thing, being the cop on that beat, had authorization to recruit some able help to handle the immature humans on an as-needed bases.
Someone is a DEEP Heinlein fanatic. “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel”. Many kudos to you, and I bow to your magnificence.
At what age did you get your “pistol” permit? (“Red Planet”)
I say put phony Marine Alex Wolpert aboard the chopper just in case it lands in the middle of a bunch of T- shirt wearing commies.
I look at the photos and say to myself ..how can anyone doubt the existence of God.
I agree.
Nope, not going there. I’ll just say that it is possible.
Your posting PERFECTLY reflects Michael W. Smith’s latest music video “A Million Lights”:
https://youtu.be/oZAhrMhVfxs
He sang at Billy Graham’s funeral.
Thank you.
I have long been a Space Junkie. I watched almost every Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and tons of the Shuttle launches including the Challenger and the return of the Columbia. I am no fan whatsoever of oblowme, but there is one thing he did right. He privatized the space race. Thanks to that from him, we now have Virgin Galactic, Space X, Orbital Sciences, Blue Origin, Bigelow Aerospace, along with big name space companies like Boeing, currently working on the Orion Capsule, General Electric, General Dynamics, McDonnell Douglas and a host of other smaller firms that are working on getting private space systems up and running if for nothing else, tourism. Add mining of asteroids, the Moon, Mars, and the list goes on and on and on. NASA is still the big boy on the block, but they are working hand in hand wi9th many of these companies to build for the future, it’s not a matter of IF we will leave Planet Earth, but a matter of when we become an interplanetary species. We are only about a hundred and fifty years into the scientific revolution that brought us from Orville and Wilbur Wright and Kitty Hawk North Carolina to landing on the Moon and bringing our crews back safely to the Earth. At the turn of the 20’Th century we still had steam locomotives as our main mode of travel over long distances. Now we have the safest flight operations we have ever had. Southwest Airlines had their first fatality this year and they have been in business for 47 years. I might have worked on this project as I currently have my computer online with the BOINC project from UC Berkeley that uses my computer and thousands of others to run huge supercomputing programs to map Stars, Galaxies,Asteroids and SETI programs too It’s free and they run in the background and rarely interfere with anything else I am doing including some heavy memory resident programs like Photoshop. (That’s so I can help the posers like DAB the DRT Cessna Pilot) !!! Here’s the website. You never know what… Read more »
You left out the link, Thunderstixx.
It was the X-Prize that pushed that first commercial manned space flight, that and the dreams and aspiration of entrepreneurs.
What zer0 did was look at an instrument of national pride, shrug, quit, and redirect that effort into the Globull Warming hoax and “Muslim outreach”.
Speaking of the NASA “muzzie outreach”, how’s that going so far. Any recruits that actually want to go into space, as opposed to just building bigger orbital bombs?
But the “Muzz” are all about science. They invented the zero. And what about Clock-boi; didn’t he invent the digital clock?
Cool.
[…] This ain’t Hell… features awesome new pics of nearby galaxies […]
Hi Guys,
Back at it after being out for a few days for some house maintenance and sleep issues.
Been with Hubble since 1999, shit it’s almost been 20 years. Damn.
Oh, and
Wondered where you had gotten off to- this had “ChipNASA” written all over it.
*grin*