Over 11 million light-years away from our tiny home planet is a massive galaxy named Centaurus A. This galaxy is one of the many located within the constellation, Centaurus. The image that I chose is of the center of Centaurus A but in this paper I will focus on the whole galaxy as well as the nucleus. In this paper I will be stating why I chose this image, sharing background information on this galaxy, what makes this galaxy so unusual, and the different stars and formations that have been discovered within this galaxy. While searching through the APOD archive the unusual name of Centaurus A immediately captured my attention. I knew that with a name like that this galaxy would be nothing short of amazing and I wasn’t mistaken. The first thing you notice is the beautiful dark clouds of dust that surround numerous colorful stars. The coloration and thickness of the dust is something that I have not usually seen in galaxies. When I finally saw a radio image of the galaxy in whole I noticed two colorful waves of light that were almost perpendicular to the center of the galaxy. After seeing the beauty of Centaurus A I knew that this was the image that I would choose. …show more content…
This galaxy has been labeled as an elliptical galaxy and a radio galaxy. After its discovery it was deemed the closest giant elliptical and radio galaxy to the Milky Way. Centaurus A is an active galaxy and is forming young blue stars within the dust band near the nucleus. After much observation it was finally concluded by an x-ray image that was captured by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, that the nucleus of Centaurus A is actually a supermassive black hole. This observation took a while to come into fruition because the galaxy is so heavily covered by the thick dust. The supermassive black hole is measured to have the mass that is about 100 million times greater than our sun’s
Charles Cullen was born on February 22, 1960, in West Orange, New Jersey. He was the youngest of eight siblings. His father worked as a bus driver, and died at age 58 when Cullen was only seven months old. Two of his siblings also died in adulthood. His mother was a stay at home mom who raised the eight children. Charles Cullen described his life as miserable, he attempted suicide at age nine by drinking chemicals he got out of a chemistry set, he attempted suicide a total of twenty times throughout his life. On December 6, 1977, when Cullen was 17 years old his mother died in a car accident, while his sister was behind the wheel. After this accident, Charles Cullen was devastated and decided to drop out of high school and join the Navy. Cullen
In the movie, The New Centurions, it shows the good, the bad, and the evil. It is a good reality movie that give you a feel for policing in LA. Even though it is out dated, the same things happen today in our society that happen in the movie.
Hadar, also known as Beta Centauri, is the 10th brightest stars (11th as viewed from Earth). Hadar is a blue-white super giant in the constellation Centaurus (Cen). In about 4,000 years, the motion of Alpha Centauri, who’s proper name is Rigel Kentaurus, will carry it close enough to Hadar that they will appear to be a magnificent double star. Because of the distance away from Earth that Alpha and Beta Centauri are (approximately 90 parsecs), they will be an optical double. As they sit today, the two stars look like a pair of eyes, the right one being Hadar and the left being Rigel Kentaurus. These two stars are considered pointer stars. A “pointer star” is a star that points towards the Southern Cross. Some of the Australian aboriginals call this pair “The two men that once were lions”. Other aboriginals consider them to be the twins that created the world.” Hadar is a proper name of unknown meaning, and has been paired with the name "Wezen," the two applied to the two bright stars in Centaurus as well as to stars in Columba, "Wezen” now commonly used for Delta Canis Majoris. Hadar, less often known as Agena (from the "knee" of the Centaur), is quite the magnificent star.
Waller, William H. The Milky Way: An Insider's Guide. Princeton, N.J: Princeton UP, 2013. 42+. Print.
It’s a white giant and has a temperature of 7700 Kelvin. It’s a type A star that is 8.5 times brighter than the sun. It is most likely to be in the last stage of ordinary star-type life. Scientists are saying the sun’s older twin is found in the middle of Capricorn. Studying this star will help them see how the Earth’s sun will develop.
Research News Planetary Scientists are Seeing the Unseeable Richard A. Kerr Science, New Series, Vol. 235, No. 2 -. 4784. The. Jan. 2, 1987, pp. 113-117. 29-31. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Stable URL:
In 1993, Universal Studios released an epic movie known as Jurassic Park. Based on the novel by Michael Crichton, Steven Spielberg and his incredible cast took the viewers on an adventure that brought dinosaurs back from the dead and set the bar for how people would expect special effects in a movie should be. The movie was critically acclaimed and won many awards for special effects and sound. Jurassic Park is one of the greatest movies of all time because it brought dinosaurs to life on screen in a way that had never been attempted before plus leading edge audio/video special effects turned the world on its head with their stunning realism and lifelike sound.
2, Alter Dinsmore, Cleminshaw H. Clarence, Philips G John. Pictorial Astronomy. United States: Sidney Feinberg, 1963.
The extreme brightness of the O-type and B-type stars, coupled with the Earth’s atmosphere, has always made high-resolution imaging of the star-forming region difficult. But recent advances in adaptive optics and the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope have allowed for incredible detail into the center of the dust cloud. 3 The technological advances have also helped reveal several faint stars within the center of the nebula.
Tyler, Pat. Supernova. NASA’s Heasarc: Education and Public Information. 26 Jan. 2003. 22 Nov. 2004
Comparing this galaxy’s size to are own Milky Way Galaxy, which is estimated to be around 8.5*1011 solar masses large, the Andromeda Galaxy is about 20% bigger then are own. Along with this we also know that both our own galaxy and this galaxy are on a collision course. It is estimated that in around 7.5 billion years that these two galaxies will merge together in a surely violent process. It is suspected that after this a large disc or elliptical galaxy will exist in the place of the once separate galaxies.
My favorite constellation, if I have to choose one, is Cassiopeia. Why? Because I have birthmarks on my right upperarm that look exaclty like the constellation. Also, this constellation is visible troughout the year in the Netherlands, where I live. The stars you'll find within the Cassiopeia constellation are: Schedar, Caph, Cih, Ruchbah, Segin, Achird and Marfak.
The first person to ever observe the Milky Way was Greek philosopher, Democritus, who said the galaxy may consist of distant stars. In 1610, Galileo Galilei used a telescope to study the Milky Way and came to the conclusion that it was composed of billions and billions of faint stars. Then, in 1750, Thomas Wright c...
... on research, On 2 August 2007 approximately more than 10 million images of galaxies had been classified by the galaxy zoo program (Galaxy Zoo).
...k around the black hole. There is another theory that the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy could swallow the Sun, which could result in a drastic and possible deadly effect on the orbits of the planets in our solar system (Wethington).