NASAs "Alien Eyes" Unlocking Secrets of the Universe

December 11, 2009

James Kaler, astronomer and author of "Heavens Gate: From Killer Stars to the Seeds of Life, How We are Connected to the Universe."

The image below is an infrared photo of M82 is a remarkable galaxy of peculiar type in constellation Ursa Major. It is usually classified as irregular, though probably a distorted disk galaxy, and famous for its heavy star-forming activity, thus a prototype member of the class of starbursting galaxies. In the infrared light, M82 is the brightest galaxy in the sky; it exhibits a so-called infrared excess, being much brighter at infrared wavelengths than in the visible part of the spectrum. Over 100 young globular clusters have been discovered in M82 with the Hubble Space Telescope. Their formation is probably another effect triggered by a tidal encounter with M81 between 50 and several 100 million years ago.

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"Our personal window on the Universe is terribly small within a stunnng range of wavelengths. With our eyes we see wavelengths between 0.00004 and 0.00008 of a centimeter (where, not so oddly, the Sun and stars emit most of their energy). The human visual spectrum from violet to red is but one octave on an imaginary electromagnetic piano with a keyboard hundreds of kilometers long."


Amazing images from Hubbel these days of our Galaxy and beyond.

[edit on 12-12-2009 by Aquarius1]

If I understand this correctly, those galaxies are in a circle? The more I learn about the universe, the more I'm noticing that everything, i.e. atoms, galaxies, planets, orbits, cycles of nature, time, etc. seems to be circular or based on a curve--spinning circles within circles (anti-gravity?). It's so simple and so complex at the same time. Maybe the human mind just makes everything complex. Great thread!

reply to post by gazerstar


I read that the galaxies are shaped like a carousel with circles and spokes protruding from them..our solar system is apparently in one of those protrusions in the the third circle from the galactic center.

A composite of our Milky Way's core is compsed of images from the Hubble Space Telescope in near-infrared light, the Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory in X-ray light. A mosaic of vast star fields is visible, along with dense star clusters, long filaments of gas and dust, expanding supernova remnants, and the energetic surroundings of what likely is our Galaxy's central black hole.

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Originally posted by gazerstar
If I understand this correctly, those galaxies are in a circle?

I'm sorry, I read the whole article but couldn't find the part where it said those galaxies are on a circle. In fact, I couldn't even find a reference to the first image, so why would they even use it?

The article doesn't say our galaxies are circular, the
information comes from elsewhere.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, forms a flat spiral shape with 6 arms (4 major and 2 minor) radiating from a dense central core.

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