February STSCI lecture review

This months lecture Milky Way vs Andromeda: When galaxies collide. was really interesting, and covered material about how galaxies are formed, looking for life and what may happen when in 7 billion years, the Andromeda galaxy merges with our own, home galaxy.

The lecture also talked about how galaxies were first discovered and how, only in the last 100 years have we really started to learn a lot more about them. Why the two will merge is linked to the expansion of the universe.

Earth, of course, won't exist by then. The sun, being 4 billion years old, will have expanded to a red giant. As the duration of a 'main sequence star' is about 10 billion years (cite OU Open Learn The Sun)

So the lecture also included about how we could find earth 2.0, the fact that this. may not be easy given the time it will take to reach even the nearest start.

Proxima Centauri (4.2ly) and the planet around that isn't very hospitable.

Personal comment to add to this

I would guess it also raises the question if it will take 10's of 1000s of years to reach will it be the same or have developed to be more life friendly, then on the other side of that a planet that is life friendly now, may like the Earth not be so friendly i 1000's of years time.

Looking forward to the next lecture in March.

REFERENCES

• Space Telescope Science Institute
• Lecture Link

TAGS

#YearOfTheFediverse,#galaxies,#space,#Telescope,#stsci,#Science,Physics,#Astronomy

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The Milky Way vs. Andromeda: When Galaxies Collide

Space Telescope Science Institute Public lectures The Milky Way vs. Andromeda: When Galaxies Collide Tue 2nd Feb 2021

Link

#space,#telescope,#astronomy,#lecture,#public,#online,#talk, #science

The Darkest Secrets of the Universe

Space Telescope Science Institute Public lectures The Darkest Secrets of the Universe Tue 19 Jan 2021

• Link

#space,#telescope,#astronomy,#lecture,#public,#online,#talk, #science

Active galaxies Review

So following on from the post on December 1st this is a quick review of the active galaxies lecture from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

This lecture, presented by Dr Mitchell Revalski, is really interesting, looking at how supermassive black holes, despite their small size compared to the galaxy they reside in.

Energy from these can push away surrounding gas, and heat this up which reduces star formation as gas needs to cool to form stars.

so scales are pretty huge:

First lets look at what a light year is

Citation : spaceplace.nasa.gov

For most space objects, we use light-years to describe their distance. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion km). That is a 6 with 12 zeros behind it! 

1 pc = 1 parsec = 3.26 light years

Supermassive black hole < 1pc

Bulge = 1 = 3 kpc (kilo parsec)

disk 30 kpc

circumgalactic area 50kpc

So even though these black holes are very small, they have a big influence on what surrounds them.

We know this is happening thanks to the research that led to the 2020 Nobel prize.

Well worth watching and the link is above.

Next lecture 19th Jan – The Darkest Secrets of the Universe Speaker: Raja Guhathakurta (UC Santa Cruz)

#astronomy,#science,#space,#telescope,#scsci,#talk, #solarsystem,#galaxy,#blackhole,#supermassive,#stars, #gravity,#light,#matter,#atoms,#emissions,#aabsorption, #spectrum,#gamma,#xray,#visible,#invisible,#parsec, #lightyear,#distance,#galactic,#bulge,#spacetelescope, #groundtelescope,#astronomers,#education,#public

Hubble – Eye in the Sky part 3

Part 3 of the NASA Mission Operations – Hubble Video Miniseries is released today.

• Eye in the Sky miniseries

The series so far, has been really interesting and each episode is roughly 10 minutes in length, so could make an ideal teaching resource too.

#nasa,#hubble,#space,#telescope,#miniseries,#documentary,#EyeintheSky

Hubble – Eye in the Sky – Mini Series

Yesterday (15/7/2020) NASA started a 3 part mini series on the Hubble space telescope.

• Hubble – Eye in the Sky

Schedule as follows

• Episode 1: Driving the Telescope Release date: July 15,
• Episode 2: An Unexpected Journey Release date: July 20
• Episode 3: Time Machines Release date: July 23

Should make an interesting series.

#space,#nasa,#telescope,hubble,#miniseries,#series,#science,#astronomy