Galaxy's vast hidden arms revealed

[Dover]

Galaxy's vast hidden arms revealed
15:40 27 July 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Maggie McKee


An ultraviolet telescope has stunned astronomers by revealing long, star-studded spiral arms around a faint, nearby galaxy. The lanky arms, which are invisible at optical wavelengths, increase the galaxy's diameter by a factor of four and may resemble those in the Milky Way more than 10 billion years ago.

An international team of astronomers made the discovery while studying the properties of 300 nearby galaxies with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) ultraviolet space telescope.

Based on previous optical images, the team expected the galaxy NGC 4625, which lies 31 million light years away, to be smaller than its neighbouring galaxy NGC 4618. But GALEX revealed it to be larger, 56,000 light years across and four times wider than previous measurements.

"It was quite shocking," says team member Armando Gil de Paz of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, US. "Most of the galaxy was unknown because it wasn't seen in the optical ."

Debra Elmegreen, an astronomer at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, US, who is not part of the team, agrees. "I was amazed by this image," she says. NGC 4625 is such "a tiny little thing" in visible light it falls into a class of faint objects called low-surface brightness galaxies, she says...cont'd

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7736

[Maple]

1. Thank you for posting this

Fascinating in several ways.

[Desertrose]

2. Another great one Dover...I have been painting

images of spiraling arm galaxies for a number of years. It is so awesome to see actual photographs and to realize that there is still an incredible amount hidden from human sight, yet it is still there and still real whether our human vision can see it or not....

Gee...makes ya wonder what else we may be missing...so much to see if we only had the "eyes" to see it ,eh??


This is sweet.

[rman]

4. This is hardly the first observation outside the visible spectrum

UV, IR, x-ray, etc etc are commonly used for astronomical observation. It's just that we haven't looked everywhere yet. The bigger problem is that presumably much of what's out there is below the treshold of detection.

[Bill McBlueState]

7. right

There are very few astronomers who limit their work to the visible spectrum. The visible spectrum just isn't very extensive compared to the radio or the infrared.

Our eyes evolved to see things in the wavelengths where the Sun gives off the most energy, which is a pretty narrow band of the spectrum compared to what is physically possible. If we had evolved close to a blue star, our vision would probably extend much further into the ultraviolet.

[Desertrose]

8. below the threshold of detection...

...."presumably much of what's out there is below the treshold of detection."

Do you think this could possibly apply to more than just what is out in the cosmos....could it also apply to humans and earth?

That perhaps there is still a number of things we are unable to see beyond what we are currently able to observe, even with all that science currently has available....?


edit typo

[Dover]

5. Not surprising that science has always inspired artists.....

The universe is beautiful, mysterious and wonderous...beyond words!

Speaking of artists inspired by science....today is Marcel Duchamp's birthday! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp

[Desertrose]

9. They should be able to complement each other nicely......

one would certainly hope that the world is big enough to encompass both.

Conceptual art was just getting started when I was in art college.... Happy Birthday, Marcel.

[Dover]

6. self delete..dupe

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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