Many people who live on Earth are close minded to what is really out there in the universe. They cannot even begin to fathom the vastness of it and how Earth is just a tiny little speck compared to everything else out there. From the planets to the stars and out towards the edge of the unknown, we can only see what science provides us with. From this, we know that we are nothing but a tiny planet located in a solar system of millions in a galaxy of many more in the universe.
A galaxy, also called a nebula, consists of billions of stars, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter which are all bound to form a massive cloud in which we live in. Although it cannot be very well explained, dark matter makes up at least 90% of a galaxy’s mass. Galaxies also contain billions upon billions of stars and their diameter can range from 1,500 to 300,000 light years. That’s huge! The Milky Way, the galaxy in which we live in, is one of about 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Our Sun is one of the billions of stars in our galaxy, and our eight planets revolve around this star in only a tiny part of our galaxy. “The Earth’s solar system is believed to exist very close to the Galaxy’s galactic plane, due to the fact that the Milky Way essentially divides the night sky into two virtually equal hemispheres” ("All About the Milky"). It definitely makes people second guess the fact of there being life on other planets.
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...
... middle of paper ...
...nucleus; this type of AGN was discovered byHeckman (1980) is called Low-Ionization Nuclear Emission-line Region (LINER); examples include the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) andM65.
Works Cited
"All About Galaxies." Space.com. TechMediaNetwork, 2010. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.
.
"All About the Milky Way." Space.com. TechMediaNetwork, 2010. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.
.
Frommert, Hartmut, and Christine Kronberg. "Galaxies." Seds.org. N.p., 13 May
2009. Web. 6 Jan. 2011. .
"Galaxies." Universe Review. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.
.
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. "Galaxy." Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia .
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 6 Jan. 2011. Web. 6 Jan. 2011.
.
In the article The Cosmic Perspective by Neil deGrasse Tyson he examines a range of topics from human life coming from Mars to how our perspective of the universe relates to religion. In the year 2000, a new space show opened at the Hayden Planetarium called Passport to the Universe, which compared the size of people Milky Way and beyond. While a show like this might make someone feel minuscule and insignificant, Tyson says that seeing the size of the universe actually makes him feel more alive not less and gives him a sense of grandeur. I agree with his idea that looking at us as a people in comparison can actually give you a sense of grandeur. However, when I compare myself to the vastness of space, it puts events on Earth in perspective while showing how influential we can be as a people even if we are small.
In Alan Lightman’s, “Our Place in the Universe,” he describes his experiences in the Greek Isles explaining how meek it made him feel to be surrounded by the vast ocean with no land in sight except a small strip of brown in the distance. Great thinkers throughout history, have been exploring the visible variety of shapes, colors, and sizes, though the greatest of these are size, from the smallest atom to gargantuan stars. These massive differences in size change the way we view ourselves in the universe. (470) Garth Illingworth, from the University of California, has studied galaxies more than 13 billion light years away from us.
Waller, William H. The Milky Way: An Insider's Guide. Princeton, N.J: Princeton UP, 2013. 42+. Print.
Every day we look into the night sky, wondering and dreaming what lies beyond our galaxy. Within our galaxy alone, there are millions upon millions of stars. This may be why it interests us to learn about all that we cannot see. Humans have known the existence of stars since they have had eyes, and see them as white glowing specks in the sky. The mystery lies beyond the white glowing specks we see but, in the things we cannot see in the night sky such as black holes.
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.
By 1936, astronomers had realized that the hazy balls they sometimes saw in their telescopes, which looked like stars obscured by gas, were actually galaxies (Hibbison).
The article for this research is “37.2 Trillion: Galaxies or Human Cells?” by Nicholas Balakar and it appeared in the New York Times. In this article, Balakar poses a question regarding which has a higher number: all of the known galaxies in the observed universe and the number of cells in the average human body. In attempting to determine the answer, he immediately states that both totals would be massive in number and that it would be impossible to reach a precise answer. There are also several unknown factors involved in this question, including the fact that the human body can vary in size a great deal and the fact that the size of the known universe is constantly changing with our ability to observe it. While individual galaxies have been identified at length, our definition of what a galaxy is has evolved over time and may continue to do so. Galaxy derived from Greek galaxias. Galaxies are defined by the National Geographic as:” sprawling space systems composed of dust gas and countless stars.” At the same time, nobody
The Andromeda Galaxy being 220,000 light years across is the biggest of its local galaxy group which includes the Milky Way Galaxy, Triangulum Galaxy, and about 44 smaller galaxies. The Andromeda Galaxy contains about (1 trillion*10to the 12th power) stars, which is more then double the estimated 200- 400 billion stars located in our own Milky Way Galaxy. Along with this the Andromeda Galaxy has a brightness magnitude of 3.4 making it one of the brightest of all the Messier Object group.
...culiar patches known as nebulae that were inside of them. Heber Curtis spotted multiple stars in Andromeda and argued that it was a separate galaxy. His argument wasn’t concluded until 1925 when Edwin Hubble identified a special kind of star known as a Cepheid variable. A Cepheid variable is a star whose characteristics allow for exact measurements of distance within Andromeda. Since Shapley had previously determined that the Milky Way was only 100,000 light-years across, Edwin Hubble’s calculations reported that the fuzzy patches were too far away to lay within the Milky Way Galaxy.(www.crystalinks.com 1)
The Universe is a collection of millions of galaxies and extends beyond human imagination. After the big bang, the universe was found to be composed of radiation and subatomic particles. Information following big bang is arguable on how galaxies formed, that is whether small particles merged to form clusters and eventually galaxies or whether the universe systematized as immense clumps of matter that later fragmented into galaxies (Nasa World book, 2013). A galaxy is a massive area of empty space full of dust, gases (mainly 75% Hydrogen and 25%Helium), atoms, about 100-200 billion stars, interstellar clouds and planets, attracted to the center by gravitational force of attraction. Based on recent research, 170 billion galaxies have been estimated to exist, with only tens of thousands been discovered (Deutsch, 2011).
The universe, it's vastness, how it was created, and why we are a part of it amazes and astounds many people who are constantly searching for answers. Others believe they have the answers and try to persuade people to understand their view. Others don't even think about it at all.
Consider astronomy one of the most ancient scientific disciplines known to human mankind. The observation of stars and planets was well known already to ancient civilizations from the Mayan to the Babylonians as these were recorded by historical records such as astral apes, and like this one are of Hispanic origin and is Japanese in this fear based on a Korean map of the 14th century. The ancient Greek had developed a very sophisticated astronomical system with Ptolemy in the second century A.D. In the solar system planets moved along orbital shells. This was the simplest astronomical hypothesis but it requires some tweaks to account for some anomalous phenomena.
People are not alone in the universe because there are millions of planets that can harbor life, millions of galaxies similar to the milky way, and it is scientifically probable. To start off, there are millions of planets similar to Earth that can harbor life. NASA predicts that in the Milky Way there may be up to 100 million planets that may host life (Fearnow). NASA is one of the best space agencies in the world,
Many things are out there in the universe and several more different things out there that we do not understand and we have yet to figure out. There are many things out there in this universe that have yet to be discovered so how come is the idea of life on other planets so hard to grasp for some people. They do not necessarily have to be very intelligent life forms, they can small living bacteria too. Many scientist and astronomers have questioned this and are still looking for answers to this question in life, are we truly the only ones out here in this universe. Many people may also refuse to believe in other life because they may be scared of what is out there but that we may have company out there or that we may be alone in this vast
A year later, using such an early refracting telescope, Galileo Galilei, an Italian physicist and astronomer, noticed the craters and mountains on the moon as well as what was later coined as the Milky Way Galaxy.