What’s going on around Andromeda? Curious structure puzzles scientists, page 1

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Topic started on 9-1-2013 @ 01:20 PM by goou111

hi all

sry if this has been posted I did a search

Really cool pic of andromeda.. just thought some of you would like it

www.rawstory.com...

Thirteen dwarf galaxies are playing a cosmic-scale game of Ring Around Andromeda, forming an enormous structure astronomers have never seen before and are hard-pressed to explain with current theories of how galaxies form and evolve.

According to current theories, the small galaxies, which contain as many as a few tens of billions of stars each, should be randomly arranged around the Andromeda galaxy.

Instead, they orbit Andromeda within a plane more than 1 million light-years across and about 30,000 light-years thick. For comparison, the latest estimates of Andromeda's girth put its diameter at more than 220,000 light-years.

The Christian Science Monitor (s.tt...)

reply posted on 9-1-2013 @ 02:15 PM by IkNOwSTuff

That pic is freakin AWESOME!!!!!! S&F

Is it an actual photograph is is it an artists rendition of data?

The universe is an amazing place and just keeps getting more and more amazinger

reply posted on 9-1-2013 @ 02:27 PM by dainoyfb

reply to post by IkNOwSTuff

It's a near infrared image. It looks a bit odd because the light is invisible to human eyes so the astronomers choose arbitrary visible colors to represent the intensity of the NIR light.

reply posted on 9-1-2013 @ 02:35 PM by IkNOwSTuff

Originally posted by dainoyfb
reply to post by IkNOwSTuff

It's a near infrared image. It looks a bit odd because the light is invisible to human eyes so the astronomers choose arbitrary visible colors to represent the intensity of the NIR light.

I have no idea what that means LOL

Anyway of dumbing it down a bit further for me?

Is what Im looking at in the pic a solid thing or is it radiation?

reply posted on 9-1-2013 @ 05:11 PM by dainoyfb

reply to post by IkNOwSTuff

It's an accurate image but the colors are off. They are off because we can't see the particular colors that are actually being detected by the telescope even though those colors are produced by a solid object. The telescope has blocked out colors we can see with filters and is only detecting colors in part of the light spectrum called the Near Infrared or NIR. This light vibrates at a frequency (color) below what our eyes can detect. For another example, our eyes can't detect radio waves even though they are the same type of energy as light but vibrating at a much, much lower frequency than visible light. Therefore a radio receiver converts the radio frequencys to sound frequencies so we can hear them. Anyway, we tune telescopes to view the NIR light that objects in space emit for a number of reasons. For instance, longer light waves penetrate gas clouds in space better than visible light so NIR light let's us see what's through obscuring clouds better. Also the sensors that we use in telescopes are more sensitive when we allow the NIR light into them because it adds it's energy to the visible light being received by the sensor. At the end of the day the image is accurate and real but the colors have been substituted for colors that the human eye can see.

Hope that helps.

edit on 9-1-2013 by dainoyfb because: I added the reply code and fixed some typos.

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