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More 100 Hours Events

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Astronomy, Astronomy, Astronomy

The 100 Hours of Astronomy events just continue on, and millions of people are enjoying and participating. How about you?  Did you watch any of the very cool “Around the World in 80 Telescopes” vodcasts yesterday and today?   I popped in throughout the day to see what’s shakin’ at observatories around (and above) the planet. The ‘casts are available from the web page link above.

The irregular galaxy NGC 55 obtained with the Wide Field Imager on the 2.2-meter MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla Observatory. Its about 7.5 million light-years away. (Click to embiggen.)
The irregular galaxy NGC 55 obtained with the Wide Field Imager on the 2.2-meter MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla Observatory. It's about 7.5 million light-years away. (Click to embiggen.)
The chaotic spiral galaxy NGC 7793, observed with the FORS instrument on the VLT in Paranal. Courtesy ESO. (Click to embiggen.)
The chaotic spiral galaxy NGC 7793, observed with the FORS instrument on the VLT in Paranal. Courtesy ESO. (Click to embiggen.)

Want to find out what’s happening near you?  Check out the Google Map-enabled activity chart here. If your 100 Hours of Astronomy participation is limited to the armchair variety (and hey, there’s nothing like sitting in front of  a warm, toasty screen enjoying astro-images), the European Southern Observatory has released two stunning images of galaxies to celebrate the events.  Both of these galaxies belong to the Sculptor Group of galaxies tha tlie about 7.5 million light-years away.  In NGC 55, astronomers studying planetary nebulae–the end-products of the evolution of stars like our Sun — were able to use their data to determine the distance to this galaxy.  They also think that this galaxy might be joining together with another galaxy, NGC 300.  For NGC 7793, astronomers are intrigued by the chaotic spiral structure it shows.  What causes the chaos?  Good question.  Perhaps an interaction with another galaxy?

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Observing in UAE. (Click to embiggen)
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Observing in Iran. (Click to embiggen)

These are just two of the many images that observatories are releasing for 100 Hours of Astronomy. I’ll try to track some more down and post links. It’s not just observatories releasing images though — folks who are participating in astronomy events around the world are posting images on the 100 Hours photo gallery.  Here are a few of my favorites.

100 Hours of Astronomy Camel Cart in Gujarat, India. (Click to embiggen.)
100 Hours of Astronomy Camel Cart in Manthan, India.
First light in New Zealand -- January 1. By Paul Moss. (Click to embiggen.)
First light in New Zealand -- January 1. By Paul Moss. (Click to embiggen.)

It’s really quite wonderful to see people get so excited about reclaiming the night skies through such activities as 100 Hours and all the events connected to the International Year of Astronomy.   It’s been a great year of astronomy so far, and there’s a LOT more to come!

Now, if some news media would deign to mention this wonderful year of outreach and sky fascination… come on CNN and BEEB and others… let’s have a little astronomy on your pages. People need some awe and wonder in their news, too.

100 Hours of Astronomy, galaxies, galaxy interactions, hubble space telescope, international year of astronomy

Arp Goodness!

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More Great Views during 100 Hours of Astronomy

Remember that contest to select HST’s next imaging target?  Well, the image has been taken and posted to celebrate 100 Hours of Astronomy and IYA.  HST imaged the winner — Arp 274, set of galaxies jsut beginning to interact with each other.  HST’s view, which was taken on April 1-2 (just the last two days!) is here. It’s a stunner!

Arp 274 in all its glory -- as seen by HST. (Click to embiggen.)
Arp 274 in all its glory, as seen by HST. This is a set of galaxies about to begin interacting. They're blooming with star-formation sites. When galaxies interact and merge, the actions often spur gas clouds to form new stars in huge "star bursts". (Click to embiggen.)

Arp 274, also known as NGC 5679, is really a system of three galaxies. They’re probably at different distances from us and each other, but from our point of view here on Earth, they appear to be overlapping.  You can make out spiral shapes in two of the galaxies, although upon closer examination, there’s some distortion going on due to the merger activity. As we might expect from galaxies that are undergoing (or have undergone) a merger, there’s a lot of star formation going on. It’s triggered by the interaction of the galaxies as shock waves slam star-forming regions and jump-starting the stellar birth process. The starbirth regions are strong along the arms of the spirals and in the small blobby-looking galaxy to the left. .

The largest component is located in the middle of the three. It appears as a spiral galaxy, which may be barred. The entire system resides at about 400 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

Astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 to image this striking galaxy triplet. Blue, visible, and infrared filters were combined with a filter that isolates hydrogen emission. The colors in this image reflect the intrinsic color of the different stellar populations that make up the galaxies. Yellowish older stars can be seen in the central bulge of each galaxy. A bright central cluster of stars pinpoint each nucleus. Younger blue stars trace the spiral arms, along with pinkish nebulae that are illuminated by new star formation. Interstellar dust is silhouetted against the starry population. The pair of foreground stars at the far righth are inside our own Milky Way Galaxy.