MetaFilter posts tagged with galaxy

Rediscover Your Place in the Galaxy

Effigy2000 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:37:23 -0800

Through three giant images, the Gigagalaxy Zoom project reveals the full sky as it appears with the unaided eye from one of the darkest deserts on Earth, then zooms in on a rich region of the Milky Way to reveal three amazing, ultra-high-resolution images of the night sky that online stargazers can zoom in on and explore in an incredible level of detail.

Galaxy Zoo 2

Upton O'Good — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 21:10:22 -0800

Galaxy Zoo 2: Help astronomers sort through 250,000 galaxies! The Sloan Digital Sky Survey found hundreds of thousands of galaxies which needed to be accurately classified; the original Galaxy Zoo project was a collaborative effort by tens of thousands of volunteers around the world to sort these galaxies into spiral and elliptical categories. Now, it's entered its second phase: describing the details of these galaxies. Read the tutorial, and then you can jump in and start classifying. For those interested in the science from the first Galaxy Zoo, there's a brief rundown on the site, and a number of papers on arXiv. Galaxy Zoo has appeared previously here [1,2], and features Mefi's own edd.

A shapely galaxy

twoleftfeet — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 23:42:38 -0800

There are many galaxies. The Sombrero Galaxy. The Whirlpool Galaxy. Lenticular galaxies. The occasional irregular galaxy. What types of galaxies do we find in the universe?

How Beckham Blew It

dig_duggler — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:16:51 -0800

"I'm not going to spend the next three years of my life doing it this way. This is f------ miserable. I don't want to have soccer be this way." Landon Donovan , center midfielder for the USA soccer team which recently lost to Brasil 3-2 in the USA's first FIFA final, talks about playing with David Beckham in an excerpt from Grant Wahl's forthcoming book 'The Beckham Experiment'.

Across The Night

Effigy2000 — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:32:58 -0800

A time lapse video of the night sky as it passes over the 2009 Texas Star Party in Fort Davis, Texas. The galactic core of the Milky Way is brightly displayed.

Make That A RASPBERRY Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster

EmpressCallipygos — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:55:16 -0800

Astronomers searching for amino acids in space have discovered something unexpected -- the center of our galaxy tastes like raspberries and smells like rum. Scans of the Sagittarius B molecular cloud near the galaxy's center have turned up a good number of ethyl formate molocules; ethyl formate smells a lot like rum, and is one of the components of the flavor of raspberries. However, alongside the ethyl formate molocules, they also picked up evidence of 50 other interstellar molecules in the vicinity of a new-formed star. The size and complexity of the ethyl formate molecules suggests that larger proteins could also form in space -- what they'll smell like, though, is anyone's guess.

Sagittarius A*

Kronos_to_Earth — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:02:07 -0800

A sixteen year long astronomical study, led by Dr. Reinhard Genzel of the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, has provided what is considered to be the best empirical evidence yet of the existence of supermassive black holes, specifically one a relatively cozy 27,000 light years away.... "The stellar orbits [QT] in the Galactic Centre [QT] show that the central mass concentration of four million solar masses must be a black hole, beyond any reasonable doubt." A video describing the study; more photos and video here.

42 + 1?

crossoverman — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:48:48 -0800

And another thing... Author Eoin Colfer (best known for the Artemis Fowl books) has been commissioned to write a sixth Hitchhiker's Guild to the Galaxy novel. So far, the Guide has nothing to say on the matter.

GalaxyZoo First Anniversary

flug — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:37:06 -0800

Today is the first birthday of Galaxy Zoo. The largest astronomical collaboration in history, Galaxy Zoo has enlisted nearly a 150,000 volunteers to help classify over a million galaxies and released four science papers. It's made a number of interesting discoveries such as a large number of ring galaxies, Hanny’s Voorwerp, and a large number of visually (but not physically) overlapping galaxies. You can help classify galaxies or classify galaxy mergers. Don't miss the visual catalog of over 250 Objects of the Day--pretty much every one of them stunning.

Billions and Billions

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:38:08 -0800

Billions and Billions astrophotography CCD gallery / film gallery / equipment / tutorials

Spice Girl comes full circle

phaedon — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 09:23:53 -0800

David Beckam signs with LA Galaxy; set to make over $1 million per week with the team.

The future from the past

tellurian — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 22:53:21 -0800

Fabio Feminò has an enormous collection of science fiction magazines to share with us. AWESOME!

Hmm....

delmoi — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 13:48:34 -0800

Does dark matter exist? Dark matter has been suggested as a solution to the galaxy rotation problem where individual stars don't seem to rotate the way Newton's laws would predict. Now, some scientists are saying that observations fit with Einstein's general relativity, without any dark matter needed. I just find it amazing that no one has tried this yet.

Dark Galaxy, Nature Nukes & Ancient Bacteria

mcgraw — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 09:37:01 -0800

First starless, “dark galaxy” discovered.
Natural nuclear reactor found in Gabon.
NASA scientists revive 32,000 year-old bacterium.
Gin .

My God, it's full of stars!

Irontom — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 05:41:54 -0800

Breathtaking Hubble picture of the Sombrero Galaxy (also identified as M104). The Hubble Heritage team took the original images during May and June of this year using the Advanced Camera for Surveys and multiple color filters. They then stitched 6 images together to make the final composite image.

3-D Maps of Nearby Space

kirkaracha — Fri, 30 May 2003 12:36:11 -0800

3-D Maps of Nearby Space "The first detailed map of space within about 1,000 light years of Earth places the solar system in the middle of a large hole that pierces the plane of the galaxy...The new map, produced by University of California, Berkeley, and French astronomers, alters the reigning view of the solar neighborhood." (one view|another view|links to bigger images)

Doughnutty Universe

msacheson — Mon, 10 Mar 2003 23:05:33 -0800

MMmmm, doughnut. (NYT link, reg. req'd) Lots of great philosophical answers to the old universe question, like our galaxy is in some giant's fingernail, and others. How about this one? Our universe is the shape of a doughnut! (more inside)

samsara — Wed, 07 Aug 2002 16:14:00 -0800

A computer aided simulation builds a spiral galaxy from its beginning. In all, 390,000 particles were placed in an arrangement similar to a newborn galaxy. The end result after three months is an event that is believed to take billions of years to occur. (animation)

Chief Typist — Thu, 20 Jun 2002 10:10:50 -0800

Feeling small or feeling big? 39 orders of magnitude that take you from the Milky Way to the proton in an oak leaf.

KirkJobSluder — Fri, 14 Sep 2001 11:36:04 -0800

Astronomers claim a massive black hole orbits our galaxy sweeping from the outskirts to the core while cryptozoologists claim bigfoot was documented on a 1930s vegetable packing crate.