Credit: X-ray: Andrew Wilson (UMCP) et al., NASA, CXC Optical: DSS / IR: NASA, JPL-Caltech / Radio: NRAO, AUI, NSF
Explanation: Better known as M106, bright spiral galaxy NGC 4258 is about 30 thousand light years across and 21 million light years away toward the northern constellation Canes Venatici. The yellow and red hues in this composite image show the galaxy's sweeping spiral arms as seen in visible and infrared light. But x-ray and radio data (blue and purple) reveal two extra spiral arms -- arms that don't align with the more familiar tracers of stars, gas, and dust. In fact, an analysis of the x-ray and radio data suggests that the anamolous arms are composed of material heated by shock waves. Detected at radio wavelengths, powerful jets originating in the galaxy's core likely drive the shocks into the disk of NGC 4258.
7 comments:
Wow, that is simply gorgeous. Very cool picture.
andrea, If I could start over in life knowing what I know now, I would love not just to be an astronomer, but to also be an Astrophotographer.
Here is an article from Astronomy magazine that explains a bit about amateur astrophotography. I have a 35 mm Canon EOS...and am going to try it next time we go someplace away from city lights on a clear and starry night.
That was a ton of useful information! I bookmarked it to study it more later.
It's frequently cloudy at night here in the Seattle area so I haven't been able to see much of the night sky. But we're getting ready to move back to Texas so I might seriously look into getting a camera or telescope or something and really appreciate astronomy.
andrea, for me - studying the stars and the cosmos gives me peace and a time for meditation. Even as a kid I would lay on my back in the grass, look up at the dark sky and let my mind wander and think about things.
That's cool. I used to love to go to planetariums when I was a kid.
I was thinking it would be something fun to introduce my boys to, since we want to homeschool them.
andrea - that's cool that you want to homeschool your kids. If I had it to do over, I would have homeschooled from the very beginning. We did however, allow our three to "escape" high school and they did a combination of independent study and community college and they received their associate degrees when all of their "peers" were graduating high school.
Anyways, when our kids were little, they were so curious about everything and I took them to the library and got books about space and science for children, and even adult books that had pictures to look at and they all knew the names of the planets and what a comet was at pre-school age. It wasn't just astronomy books they loved, but books about nature and animals, insects, weather, geology, biology, chemistry...etc. They also loved these books about the states. The learned so much from books and taking them places like the museums, planetarium, aquarium, and we traveled a lot. No wonder they were bored all the time in school!
Sweet - that's exactly what we want to do. Our 5-year old loves dinosaurs so we read a lot about them. He turns 6 in June, so we're going to take him to the Pacific Science Center for his birthday. It will be just in time for a brand new dinosaur exhibit. They have some fossils from China or something. After all this time reading about them, we'll finally get to see dinosaur bones in person!
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