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#astrophysics

17 posts16 participants0 posts today
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formuchdeliberation

Why we still don’t know how many stars are in the Milky Way – Big Think…

Learning some critical information about our own home within the cosmos has been exceedingly difficult. Although we live within the Milky Way, there’s a tremendous amount of information about it that we simply struggle to determine... #space #universe #astrophysics #stars #milkyway

formuchdeliberation.wordpress.

for much deliberation · Why we still don’t know how many stars are in the Milky Way – Big Think…Learning some critical information about our own home within the cosmos has been exceedingly difficult. Although we live within the Milky Way, there’s a tremendous amount of information about it th…
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UniversoMagico

#UMPlus - Berkeley 39 by Dan Crowson

universomagico.net/2025/04/ber

This bright image by astronomer Dan Crowson shows the open star cluster Berkeley 39, a group of stars whose proper motions are related to each other. This cluster is located in the direction of the Monoceros constellation and lies at a distance of about 14,000 light-years from the Solar System. A.....
#astronomy #space #astrophysics #astrophotography

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ESO

Supermassive black hole caught playing with its food!

The supermassive black hole at the centre of galaxy NGC 4945 is swallowing huge amounts of matter. Yet, contrary to a black hole’s all-consuming reputation, our Very Large Telescope (VLT) has caught it blowing out powerful winds of material.

This cone-shaped wind is shown in red in the inset image. In fact, the wind is moving so fast that it will end up escaping the galaxy altogether, lost to the void of intergalactic space.

Read more: eso.org/public/images/potw2513

📷 ESO/C. Marconcini et al.

A galaxy stretching across the dark, star-filled expanse of space. Beside it, an inset zooms in on the galaxy’s core, revealing clouds of gas and dust, from which a bright, red, cone-shaped structure emerges.
#astrodon#astronomy#astrophysics
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Miss Gayle

"Storm clouds generate massive electrical potentials...but nowhere is the electric field strong enough to ionize the air and start a miles-long branching bolt. Something needs to create the initial spark...

Using precise radio-wave detection in three dimensions, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have determined that the sparks are provided by cosmic rays...atomic-scale particles traveling at incredible speeds..."

Link: dendroica.substack.com/p/inter

Interlude: Galactic Lightning And a real planetary alignment Markael Luterra, Mar 27, 2025 Image of a grey sky over water, small boats and rocks in the foreground, above a lightning bolt reaches from the sky to the water. Atef Ouni, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Amidst the chaotic headlines last week, the news you probably didn’t hear is that scientists have effectively confirmed that cosmic rays spark lightning. I want to share why I find this absolutely wondrous, which means I first need to try to describe some physics at the boundaries of my understanding. There is a problem with lightning. The problem is that it shouldn’t actually happen. "When these extra-powerful particles collide with atoms in the atmosphere, at a rate of about 15 per square mile per second, they generate a chain reaction of nuclear physics, each impact creating more particles like a series of billiard breaks until over a million balls are in motion and the energy has finally been exhausted. This is called an “air shower”, and it’s happening all around us all of the time, and it’s how our atmosphere protects our bodies and all life on Earth."
#Lightning#Weather#AstroPhysics
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Dr. John Barentine FRAS

JWST just keeps dropping bangers this week.

This image is of a galaxy in a cluster called SMACSJ0028.2-7537. But it's a two-fer, courtesy of general relativity: "What at first appears to be a single, strangely shaped galaxy is actually two galaxies that are separated by a large distance. The closer foreground galaxy sits at the center of the image, while the more distant background galaxy appears to be wrapped around the closer galaxy, forming a ring."

The apparent 'wrapping' of the background spiral galaxy results from the gravity of the foreground elliptical galaxy. It warps the space (and time) around it, changing the paths taken by light from the background object, creating a funhouse mirror effect. In honor of the theorizer of general relativity, these configurations are called 'Einstein rings'.

More info: esawebb.org/images/potm2503a/

📷: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Mahler

In the centre is an elliptical galaxy, seen as an oval-shaped glow around a small bright core. Around this is wrapped a broad band of light, appearing like a spiral galaxy stretched and warped into a ring, with bright blue lines drawn through it where the spiral arms have been stretched into circles. A few distant objects are visible around the ring on a black background.
#Astronomy#Astrophysics#Physics
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Bob Tregilus

Wow, a stunning image by JWST of an Einstein ring, a more distant galaxy's light being bent by gravitational lensing around a much closer galaxy. The closer galaxy is an elliptical and the much more distant galaxy, which in this case is perfectly aligned behind the foreground elliptical thereby forming the ring, is a spiral galaxy. I think this beautiful image is going to be my desktop for awhile. Just stunning!

esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/

www.esa.intWebb spies a spiral through a cosmic lensSpying a spiral through a cosmic lens (Webb telescope image)
#Astronomy#AstroPhysics#Universe
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