GeekwithEnvy

Galaxy

A Incredible View of The Stars From Space

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Looking up at the night sky reminds us of how small we really are compared to the vastness of the universe but our view down here on the Earth’s surface doesn’t compare to the view the Space Station crew has.

This video shows off not only an amazing view of Earth, which we tend to focus on the most, but also it showcases the stars and even the Milky Way galaxy. Notice how the video captures the lights from the cites, the lightning from storms and the auroras high up in the atmosphere, which looks incredibly thin.

Amazing 3D View of Known Universe

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The universe in which we exist is unimagineably immense and we only know of a very small portion of it. That “small” portion however is massive all by itself and you can get a real feel for just how massive it is by watching this awesome video that was posted by the Los Angeles Times  which shows us a 3D map of the known universe.

3DUniverseMap

 

It’s incredible to see how all of this data comes together and it’s interesting to see the size, scale and shape of what we know is out there. The video is just over 17 minutes long and features lots of cool animations, some of which show portions of the universe that we barely know about. The map covers about 120 million light-years of space and time and features narration by Helene Courtois of the University of Lyon in France.

Two Galaxies Colliding

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HerschelMerger
Image credit: (ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/UC Irvine/STScI/Keck/NRAO/SAO)

When it comes to massive events, Galaxies colliding is pretty high up on the list. Imagine billions of stars from two galaxies intermingling as two systems merge.

This is exactly what the Herschel space observatory has taken images of in this relatively rare event. The two galaxies together are called HXMM01 and are located about 11 billion light-years away from Earth. The merging galaxies are creating some 2,000 stars per year which is a lot when compared to our Milky Way galaxy which only creates about two to three stars per year.

This discovery is important as it gives us a rare glimpse into the early years of the universe and actually helps give us a clearer picture of how the largest galaxies in the universe are created. The most popular theory is that these massive systems are created by a larger galaxy picking up smaller ones, but this discovery shows us that they may actually be created by two massive galaxies colliding instead.

You can read the full article in detail on this subject from JPL/NASA.

 

Possibly the Most Distant Object in the Universe and Looking Into the Past

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NASA has recently discovered what they think is the most distant object to ever be observed. This object is actually a galaxy named MACS0647-JD and it’s so far away that normally we wouldn’t be able to see it, even with our best telescopes. So, how are we able to see it then? Well, we lucked out, we got a little help from a cluster of galaxies known as MACS J0647+7015. Large celestial objects like galaxies have such large gravitational influence that they can actually distort and bend light passing near them. In the case of MACS J0647+7015, NASA was able to use this gravitational distortion as kind of a deep space magnifying glass. This effect is what enabled NASA to capture the light of this distant galaxy.

Nasa Most Distant Object
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Postman and D. Coe (STScI) and CLASH Team.

The light of MACS0647-JD has taken nearly 13.3 billion years to reach Earth. We are essentially looking at an object from the theorized beginning of the universe (the big bang). This amazing discovery actually gets me thinking about the distances between objects in space and how long it takes for light to travel between them.

What if we could somehow instantaneously appear 65 million light years away from Earth, and what if we had a telescope with us that was capable of zooming in all the way to the Earth’s surface. Would we see dinosaurs walking the Earth? Theoretically, yes, we should. This raises some fun ideas about what’s possible in the universe. What if we just went a fraction of our first trip away from Earth? Perhaps we only go far enough away to witness the early  beginnings of human civilization and maybe we could just get it all on video. This video would be our exact history, nothing unchanged or lost from our true story. How amazing would that be?

Assuming that in our hypothetical world we can travel to almost any distance, we could actually watch the beginning of our solar system. We could know truly how the Moon was formed and perhaps even watch our solar system form, maybe even watch the Milky Way form. Of course we would need to somehow move our camera closer to the objects we are observing at a relatively quick rate in order to watch the creation of large objects like the Milky Way form in a reasonable amount of time, basically a galactic time lapse. Just a little food for thought.

To see a full article on the new discovery, head over to the official NASA post.