Since we’ve been talking about snow quite a bit recently, this seems fitting. WUWT reader Tom in Texas tips us to this image:
A composite of archival Hubble data taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Like a whirl of shiny flakes sparkling in a snow globe, Hubble caught this glimpse of stars in the globular cluster M13. The cluster is home to over 100,000 stars, packed closely together in a ball approximately 150 light-years across, and is located at a distance of 25,000 light-years. Picture: AFP / NASA / ESA
Click here to see a high-res version of the Hubble snow globe I wonder what the sky would look like from a world in the center of that cluster? Would some of the stars look like bright marbles in the sky?
If you really want to see some interesting things from the HST, have a look at this gallery:
Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2009
Like the photo above, it gives some perspective about our place and scale in the universe.
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An interesting view on global clusters:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/051216m15cluster.htm
Robinson (06:16:39) :
What interests me about globular clusters is why they don’t collapse into a single gigantic star/supernova. Are they orbiting a mutual centre of gravity?
Yes, of course (or perhaps more precise: it is a complex multi-body system). These things are huge and far away so they appear static to us. But in reality they are very dynamic, the laws of gravity are just as valid over there as they are here.
The M13 globular cluster is ~145 light years in diameter and about 25000 light years from us….. the angular diameter as seen from here is ~23 arc minutes, i.e.slightly less than the Sun and the Moon.
Cool !
How big is the Bulk anyway? I’ve seen the Hubble Deep Filed photos of a pin point location of the edge of our known Universe. It was filled with galaxy clusters. I suppose there are galaxies beyond those too.
I have seen a commenter here say gravity and falling are the same—from Einsteins concept—so the commenter said the Universe is falling. He didn’t stop to imagine that out Universe could actually be orbiting something, maybe another Universe in the Bulk, and not falling.
Re:Stellar density….it is almost unbelievable but…if two galaxies with billions of stars….were to collide with each other…they would pass through each other without a single stellar collision !!!
Wow, that’s a lot of bugs in front of the camera lens.
Don’t you hate it when the flash makes them stand out like that?
😉
Globular clusters….down here in the southern Hem we have two spectacular ones, 47-Tuc and ω Centauri ….these clusters are very old and lie outside the plane/disc of the galaxy and are rumoured to be unsuitable for organic life…The globular cluster ω Centauri is the most-studied stellar system of our Galaxy, but nevertheless one of the most puzzling. It hosts different stellar populations….tidal stripping may explain its present size…it has been proposed that it was once a dwarf elliptical galaxy but was then tidally disrupted by the Milky way galaxy…however it is still probably the largest of the globular clusters …
David Allan…”The foundation to understanding terrestrial climate lies in understanding space weather. We will not be any closer to predicting climate here on earth until we have a better grasp on the study of heliophysics. I believe that.”
very well put…I often wondered what the effect on the earth,s climate would be if the sun was just slightly “variable” a sort of minor deltascuti star !!!
Oh my God… It’s full of stars!
For an interesting comparison of the size of planets and stars: click
[takes a few seconds to load]
toyotawhizguy (05:17:57) :
To assume that the solar wind and an interstellar gas cloud would have the same optical qualities because they are both comprised of the same gases is a fallacy.
That was not the assumption or the issue. The interstellar cloud in question is also hot [6000C] and that makes it ionized and comparable to the solar wind.
An amazing picture and not one uber-geek reference to Star Wars. So here it is.(Someone mentioned Romulan though.:))
“Pamela Gray (00:13:11) :
Do I see double Sun’s? These are Suns that rotate around each other.”
Hey, is that a planet orbiting the suns? And wait, there appears to be a young, dirty-blonde haired man staring at the horizon? Oh, and two ships engaging in a battle in orbit? Oh cool, a smaller vessel just launched towards the planet from the smaller of the two battling vessels.
Okay, uber-geekness done. Just a too frackin’ cool picture though.
“Isaac Asimov’s best short story,”Nightfall”, was based entirely on that question.”
Both a short story and a novel. 🙂
@ur momisugly Mohib (22:52:24)
here is another fine example of pro-am collaboration, which I’ve not seen mentioned here:
http://www.galaxyzoo.org/
Here, ordinary people are asked to help categorize galaxies – because they are better at it than any computer programme.
Great fun – but be warned: its highly addictive …!
Hi Anthony and Team!
We wish you all the best for 2010 from Austria!
Go on with your ecellent work and stay healty.
Oops. Math correction. I should have written:
s = 17.7^1/3
s = 2.6 ly
I used Google math and didn’t at first realize it had divided by 3 instead of taking the cube root. Should have been 17.7^(1/3).
Anyway, that’s 2.6 ly between stars using this approximation. How close to accurate is it?
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (07:23:30) : Perhaps the answer is in this link:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/051216m15cluster.htm
There are binary and even ternary star systems out there–where two or three suns orbit around each other. Star systems that have more than three stars are known, but their number declines exponentially.
A few examples of binaries: Sirius (An “A” star and a white dwarf); and Epsilon Aurigae (an eclipsing binary).
A few examples of ternaries: Polaris (one companion star was so close it wasn’t photographed until 2006 w/ Hubble); and Alpha Centauri (a yellow dwarf pair and an outlying red dwarf orbiting the two yellow dwarfs).
I’d just hate to live on a planet orbiting any of these multiple-star systems; days would probably be difficult if not impossible to define and the tides would be chaotic. One sun is enough!
“KlausB (07:07:36) :
[…]
My personal rule of thumb for it: No civilisation will support
more than three builds, …”
Wouldn’t costs come down with each repetition? Or, in other words, with every invention a civilization makes, everything becomes simpler. Say you increase the efficiency of the turbines used in power plants by 0.1 percent point and you have 1000 such power plants. That’s like getting one for free. Now you have the capacity of one powerplant, say 2 GW, for free. Hey, now your civilization can run one synchrotron for free and do materials research with it. And so on.
And this is what is actually happening. (And yes: one synchrotron eats up that much power when its on.)
Just went to this from a Drudge link:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091230184221.htm
No significant rise in CO2 either analzed for last 150 years or for last 5 decades??
Does this mean that if Cap and Trade goes through and atmospheric CO2 goes down, I get some kind of tax refund? Awesomeness!!! 🙂
Fortunately WUWT it is not a confusing globular cluster, it is almost a black hole which sucks all bloggers in it; that is why many posters, I would say the majority of them, in spite of having their own blogs, fall by WUWT gravity which drags them all in. (WUWT could even have some satellite blogs for a fee).
This astronomy issue it is a good new topic, supposing that “global warming” as a discussion issue is about to die frozen.
This new one it is very controversial also, so Good Luck! and
Happy New Year!
DirkH (09:20:11) :
Dirk, costs do only come down when you have multiples to build, especially multiples at the same time. With time lags and technological changes and enhancements, which surely will occure, you allways have a prototype and
the costs of a prototype.
For my rule of thumb, I already factored in a decrease to 1/1000th of the
costs of today, due to technological enhancements.
Awesome. Thanks Anthony and a Happy New Year to you and all the team.
WWUWT — Watts Wayyyy Up With That! Haha. A nice post to conclude the “International Year of Astronomy.”
Astronomy is one of my areas expertise. Here are some replies to the preceding comments…
Mike McMillan: Given the concentration of white and blue stars, you’d probably fry from the UV radiation. .
Actually, most of the stars are red dwarfs. The few blue stars, called “blue stragglers” may be the result of stellar collisions.
Mohib: Amateur astronomers have many, many formal pro-am collaboration relationships….
Here’s another very recent example for your list, featuring yours truly: http://tinyurl.com/ydx3n3v 😀
Robert Wykoff: average distance between stars 17.7 light years.
Gabriel: Actually… 3.2ly on average between stars
Gabriel is correct to note that the density is not uniform. The core is much denser than the fringes. And the total stellar population of M13 is several hundred thousands — not merely 100,000. Figure on spacings < 1 light year in the core.
gtrip: It’s pretty, but can in support life?
Doubtful. Globular clusters are ancient objects formed in the early universe and have very low metalicity (i.e., few elements heavier than Hydrogen and Helium). There has been one planet discovered orbiting a pulsar in another globular cluster, M4. It’s believed to be a Jupiter-like gas giant; perhaps all planets in globular clusters are such.
Pamela Gray: Do I see double Sun’s? These are Suns that rotate around each other.
Globular clusters are certainly chock-full of binary star systems. “Blue stragglers” may be fused binaries. However, most of the pairings you see in the photo are just chance visual alignments — to be expected given such a rich density! (Greetings from the opposite corner of Oregon, BTW)
P Wilson: If the universe is infinite, how can infinity expand on itself?
Food for thought: imagine that the sizes of all objects in the universe are shrinking rather than the spaces between objects expanding — your paradox vanishes, even though the two scenarios are observationally equivalent. 😉
Happy 2010, everyone!
Happy New Year to Anthony and team.
Your efforts are awesome and greatly appreciated.