The Universe

[dorlomin]

 

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/032/01G72VSFW756JW5SXWV1HYMQK4

The background image is an artists rederning, this is not so much an image as data from a light spectrum. As light moves through a gas it gets absorbed so you get an absorption spectra, CH4 (methane), CO2 and H2O all absorb in the infrared so this is a big part of what we want to see from Webb, absorption spectra in infrared ranges in planetary atmospheres. 

Edited July 12, 2022 by dorlomin

[dorlomin]

Its the gases a mid sized star blows off as it dies. This was a red giant but now a white dwarf at the centre as the gasses are called a planetary nebula (not where planets form, just a bad name from long ago). 

Edited July 12, 2022 by dorlomin

[BigDoddyKane]

lucky gases

[dorlomin]

 

 

Stephans Quintet, 4 very close galaxies, long time ago, far far away. (the one on the left is much closer, but back when it was discovered it was thought all 5 were close together. )

Edited July 12, 2022 by dorlomin

[dorlomin]

Carina Nebula. 

[Bairnardo]

Carina Nebula. 

How far from edge to edge on that pic?

[MONKMAN]

40 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

1 hour ago, dorlomin said:

Carina Nebula. 

How far from edge to edge on that pic?

The "cliffs" as NASA describes them are approximately 7 light years tall (approximately 40000000000000 miles), so pretty fucking big.

I love some of the older Hubble shots, but these new photos are mind blowing.

 

 

Edited July 12, 2022 by MONKMAN

[Ken Deans]

Am 100% convinced our universe is teeming with life. Some of it a damn sight smarter than homo sapiens. Let's hope if we survive long enough to meet them we try and be kind

[MONKMAN]

3 minutes ago, Ken Deans said:

Am 100% convinced our universe is teeming with life. Some of it a damn sight smarter than homo sapiens. Let's hope if we survive long enough to meet them we try and be kind

It's inconceivable to think that there's no other forms of life out there.  with the sheer scale of the universe, there just has to be.

[djchapsticks]

7 minutes ago, Ken Deans said:

Am 100% convinced our universe is teeming with life. Some of it a damn sight smarter than homo sapiens. Let's hope if we survive long enough to meet them we try and be kind

Or hope that they are kind to us.

[Brother Blades]

5 minutes ago, Ken Deans said:

Am 100% convinced our universe is teeming with life. Some of it a damn sight smarter than homo sapiens. Let's hope if we survive long enough to meet them we try and be kind

If there’s contact with earth, knowing our luck, our interstellar friends will arrive during an OF game & f**k off straight back to where they came from! Quite rightly IMO. 

[djchapsticks]

1 hour ago, dorlomin said:

 

Stephans Quintet, 4 very close galaxies, long time ago, far far away. (the one on the left is much closer, but back when it was discovered it was thought all 5 were close together. )

Saw it described as an ongoing series of 4 galaxies in perpetual near misses.

It got me wondering what's was going on in there, again, we're talking literally billions, possibly trillions of celestial bodies making up those four galaxies. Was it violent and chaotic? Was the scale of what went on so large that any insignificant spots of life within it didn't even understand or notice it?

Galaxies colliding certainly paints a violent picture but these things can take millions and millions of years to happen. Indeed, this entire event that we are seeing now, has by now probably played out to it's conclusion and done so long before dinosaurs became extinct. The photo is a snapshot of how these galaxies were situated 290 million years ago.

Many, many entire civilisations will most certainly have risen and fallen, came into existence and gone extinct in the middle of this event and never actually knew what was even going on as they could not observe this event from a distance.

Edited July 12, 2022 by djchapsticks

[Sergeant Wilson]

1 hour ago, Bairnardo said:

1 hour ago, dorlomin said:

Carina Nebula. 

How far from edge to edge on that pic?

About 4 or 5 cm.

[djchapsticks]

7 minutes ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

About 4 or 5 cm.

Is that a Carina Nebula in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

[welshbairn]

Slightly higher resolution I think..

[dorlomin]

1 hour ago, djchapsticks said:

Saw it described as an ongoing series of 4 galaxies in perpetual near misses.

It got me wondering what's was going on in there, again, we're talking literally billions, possibly trillions of celestial bodies making up those four galaxies. Was it violent and chaotic? Was the scale of what went on so large that any insignificant spots of life within it didn't even understand or notice it?

 

I will try answer this but its going to take a bit of writing. First up remember things like our Moon remains bound to us due to the pull of our gravity even though the Sun is massively larger because we are closer. So even as the other galaxies are huge, the stars in a home galaxy feel the pull of that galaxy massively more. 

Then a thought experiment on how gravity and orbits work. When you think of throwing up a ball, the ball starts with a lot of speed, kinetic energy, that goes to zero as it stops at the top and turns back to maximum as it hits the ground. Inversely it has zero potential energy at the start and has maximum at the top. Orbits are elliptical and they are constant exchanges of kinetic for potential energy. Think of a satellite on a very elliptical orbit. At the top its moving slow, with lots of potential energy. Then it falls towards the Earth gaining speed and losing potential energy, till it whizes round at high speed, enough to throw it back up to to the top where is slows down again.

These galaxies are in a similar pattern, they fall in, gaining speed and whizzing round a common center point before shooting out again into the deeper space. The four of them are doing this all the time.  They just happen to have orbits where the points they orbit round is larger than their area so they do not collide and leach of off each other. For billions of galaxy clusters in the past this was not the case and they became combined to bigger galaxies we see today. 

The stars feel a tug of a close pass, but the mass of the galaxy is enough to ensure that tug does not really break them up. 

When galaxies collides, its mostly dust hitting dust. The stars are tiny tiny dots separated by light years of distance. Some stars will pass close enough to affect each other but most wont. But the total masses of the galaxies are enough for each to majorly affect the other. 

The dust clouds do interact and this is the "violence", though a small galaxy and a big galaxy can end up with the small one being stripped apart, our Milky Way is doing this to a few satellite galaxies. 

 

[Bairnardo]

3 hours ago, MONKMAN said:

The "cliffs" as NASA describes them are approximately 7 light years tall (approximately 40000000000000 miles), so pretty fucking big.

I love some of the older Hubble shots, but these new photos are mind blowing.

 

 

I'm still convinced we're just bugs living in a big f**k off sneeze, and it's all just a matter of magnitude/perspective. 

That picture doesn't help. You look at it and your brain tries to rationalise is as looking like something you can understand.... Clouds, maybe a sandstorm. Maybe just a huge sandstorm.... Nope, it's actually a fucking enormous distance you can't even comprehend or compare to anything. 

[Sergeant Wilson]

1 hour ago, dorlomin said:

I will try answer this but its going to take a bit of writing. First up remember things like our Moon remains bound to us due to the pull of our gravity even though the Sun is massively larger because we are closer. So even as the other galaxies are huge, the stars in a home galaxy feel the pull of that galaxy massively more. 

Then a thought experiment on how gravity and orbits work. When you think of throwing up a ball, the ball starts with a lot of speed, kinetic energy, that goes to zero as it stops at the top and turns back to maximum as it hits the ground. Inversely it has zero potential energy at the start and has maximum at the top. Orbits are elliptical and they are constant exchanges of kinetic for potential energy. Think of a satellite on a very elliptical orbit. At the top its moving slow, with lots of potential energy. Then it falls towards the Earth gaining speed and losing potential energy, till it whizes round at high speed, enough to throw it back up to to the top where is slows down again.

These galaxies are in a similar pattern, they fall in, gaining speed and whizzing round a common center point before shooting out again into the deeper space. The four of them are doing this all the time.  They just happen to have orbits where the points they orbit round is larger than their area so they do not collide and leach of off each other. For billions of galaxy clusters in the past this was not the case and they became combined to bigger galaxies we see today. 

The stars feel a tug of a close pass, but the mass of the galaxy is enough to ensure that tug does not really break them up. 

When galaxies collides, its mostly dust hitting dust. The stars are tiny tiny dots separated by light years of distance. Some stars will pass close enough to affect each other but most wont. But the total masses of the galaxies are enough for each to majorly affect the other. 

The dust clouds do interact and this is the "violence", though a small galaxy and a big galaxy can end up with the small one being stripped apart, our Milky Way is doing this to a few satellite galaxies. 

 

Exactly!

[Melanius Mullarkey]

4 hours ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

About 4 or 5 cm.

I’m on the iPad so I’m calling this shite.

[DA Baracus]

If the laws of physics are universal, then we'll never make contact with alien life, or vice versa, unless they have some mad stasis technology (which probably will never exist).