Sombrero Galaxy

This is Messier 104, or the Sombrero Galaxy as seen through the Hubble Space Telescope. It is kinda far away at 28 million light-years. You can find it in the galaxy-strewn Virgo constellation.


It's funny how shapes in nature look like things. 

This is caused by the dust ring around the perphery of a what looks like a spiral galaxy.

I don't really know if things like this are by chance or some natural law creates symmetrical shapes. Galaxies are a good example of this. They come in all shapes and sizes. There are more than you can count in the Universe. 


What is the chance that in any of all those galaxies, that an earth-like planet exists? Even by the simple law of averages, that may be the case. I believe so. Whether there is life there or anything like us, I can't say.


Then again, if there is anything like us, do you really want to meet them?

Supernova 1987 A

I talked about it, it is on the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula within the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is over 160,000 light-years away, not a distance to traverse casually.

The shockwaves are visible in this modern picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Such shockwaves compress nebulae and molecular clouds, seeding them with elements and driving star birth. This was how the Sun came to be.


The light from SN 1987-A reached earth in 1987, and was bright enough to see in the daytime. Unfortunately, it was only visible from the Southern Hemisphere.

I remember learning a lot about it when it happened. I was 11 when it happened.

Imagine the power of an exploding star. One of these days, it will happen to Betelguese, the 'right shoulder' of Orion. It is so big, if it replaced the Sun, it would engulf every planet out to Saturn. Astronomers say that it could have blown already and the light/energy has not reached our solar system yet.

One light-year is 3 trillion miles. Just thinking of such a distance is hard. The farthest human object in space, Voyager 1, is just 60 or so AU away and getting farther. An AU (Astronomical Unit) is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, 93 million miles. It should make it to a nearby star in forty or so millennia.

You can learn more about all this on Wikipedia or www.nasa.gov or ask me. Astronomy is my love. Has always been.

Arp 273

In this April 20, 2011 photo provided by NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope captures a group of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, has a disk that is tidally distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. A swath of blue jewels across the top is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young blue stars. The smaller, nearly edge-on companion shows distinct signs of intense star formation at its nucleus, perhaps triggered by the encounter with the companion galaxy. A series of uncommon spiral patterns in the large galaxy is a tell-tale sign of interaction. Arp 273 lies in the constellation Andromeda and is roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth. Hubble was launched April 24, 1990, aboard Discovery's STS-31 mission. (AP Photo/NASA)

So beautiful, isn't it? An inspiration of nature's beauty. You can learn about the Arp Catalog of Peculiar Galaxies at Wikipedia.