Over 11 million light-years away from our tiny home planet is a massive galaxy named Centaurus A. This galaxy is one of the many located within the constellation, Centaurus. The image that I chose is of the center of Centaurus A but in this paper I will focus on the whole galaxy as well as the nucleus. In this paper I will be stating why I chose this image, sharing background information on this galaxy, what makes this galaxy so unusual, and the different stars and formations that have been discovered within this galaxy. While searching through the APOD archive the unusual name of Centaurus A immediately captured my attention. I knew that with a name like that this galaxy would be nothing short of amazing and I wasn’t mistaken. The first thing you notice is the beautiful dark clouds of dust that surround numerous colorful stars. The coloration and thickness of the dust is something that I have not usually seen in galaxies. When I finally saw a radio image of the galaxy in whole I noticed two colorful waves of light that were almost perpendicular to the center of the galaxy. After seeing the beauty of Centaurus A I knew that this was the image that I would choose. …show more content…
This galaxy has been labeled as an elliptical galaxy and a radio galaxy. After its discovery it was deemed the closest giant elliptical and radio galaxy to the Milky Way. Centaurus A is an active galaxy and is forming young blue stars within the dust band near the nucleus. After much observation it was finally concluded by an x-ray image that was captured by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, that the nucleus of Centaurus A is actually a supermassive black hole. This observation took a while to come into fruition because the galaxy is so heavily covered by the thick dust. The supermassive black hole is measured to have the mass that is about 100 million times greater than our sun’s
Charles Cullen was born on February 22, 1960, in West Orange, New Jersey. He was the youngest of eight siblings. His father worked as a bus driver, and died at age 58 when Cullen was only seven months old. Two of his siblings also died in adulthood. His mother was a stay at home mom who raised the eight children. Charles Cullen described his life as miserable, he attempted suicide at age nine by drinking chemicals he got out of a chemistry set, he attempted suicide a total of twenty times throughout his life. On December 6, 1977, when Cullen was 17 years old his mother died in a car accident, while his sister was behind the wheel. After this accident, Charles Cullen was devastated and decided to drop out of high school and join the Navy. Cullen
Hadar, also known as Beta Centauri, is the 10th brightest stars (11th as viewed from Earth). Hadar is a blue-white super giant in the constellation Centaurus (Cen). In about 4,000 years, the motion of Alpha Centauri, who’s proper name is Rigel Kentaurus, will carry it close enough to Hadar that they will appear to be a magnificent double star. Because of the distance away from Earth that Alpha and Beta Centauri are (approximately 90 parsecs), they will be an optical double.
It’s a white giant and has a temperature of 7700 Kelvin. It’s a type A star that is 8.5 times brighter than the sun. It is most likely to be in the last stage of ordinary star-type life. Scientists are saying the sun’s older twin is found in the middle of Capricorn. Studying this star will help them see how the Earth’s sun will develop.
In 1993, Universal Studios released an epic movie known as Jurassic Park. Based on the novel by Michael Crichton, Steven Spielberg and his incredible cast took the viewers on an adventure that brought dinosaurs back from the dead and set the bar for how people would expect special effects in a movie should be. The movie was critically acclaimed and won many awards for special effects and sound. Jurassic Park is one of the greatest movies of all time because it brought dinosaurs to life on screen in a way that had never been attempted before plus leading edge audio/video special effects turned the world on its head with their stunning realism and lifelike sound.
Just recently a major discovery was found with the help of a device known as The Hubble Telescope. This telescope has just recently found what many astronomers believe to be a black hole, After being focuses on a star orbiting empty space. Several pictures of various radiation fluctuations and other diverse types of readings that could be read from that area which the black hole is suspected to be in.
The extreme brightness of the O-type and B-type stars, coupled with the Earth’s atmosphere, has always made high-resolution imaging of the star-forming region difficult. But recent advances in adaptive optics and the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope have allowed for incredible detail into the center of the dust cloud. 3 The technological advances have also helped reveal several faint stars within the center of the nebula.
In the movie, The New Centurions, it shows the good, the bad, and the evil. It is a good reality movie that give you a feel for policing in LA. Even though it is out dated, the same things happen today in our society that happen in the movie.
My favorite constellation, if I have to choose one, is Cassiopeia. Why? Because I have birthmarks on my right upperarm that look exaclty like the constellation. Also, this constellation is visible troughout the year in the Netherlands, where I live. The stars you'll find within the Cassiopeia constellation are: Schedar, Caph, Cih, Ruchbah, Segin, Achird and Marfak.
Waller, William H. The Milky Way: An Insider's Guide. Princeton, N.J: Princeton UP, 2013. 42+. Print.
Research News Planetary Scientists are Seeing the Unseeable Richard A. Kerr Science, New Series, Vol. 235, No. 2 -. 4784. The. Jan. 2, 1987, pp. 113-117. 29-31. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Stable URL:
Comparing this galaxy’s size to are own Milky Way Galaxy, which is estimated to be around 8.5*1011 solar masses large, the Andromeda Galaxy is about 20% bigger then are own. Along with this we also know that both our own galaxy and this galaxy are on a collision course. It is estimated that in around 7.5 billion years that these two galaxies will merge together in a surely violent process. It is suspected that after this a large disc or elliptical galaxy will exist in the place of the once separate galaxies.
Tyler, Pat. Supernova. NASA’s Heasarc: Education and Public Information. 26 Jan. 2003. 22 Nov. 2004
...k around the black hole. There is another theory that the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy could swallow the Sun, which could result in a drastic and possible deadly effect on the orbits of the planets in our solar system (Wethington).
The first person to ever observe the Milky Way was Greek philosopher, Democritus, who said the galaxy may consist of distant stars. In 1610, Galileo Galilei used a telescope to study the Milky Way and came to the conclusion that it was composed of billions and billions of faint stars. Then, in 1750, Thomas Wright c...
Astronomers believe that most galaxies consist of a supermassive black hole at the center, which attracts all constituents of galaxies such as, dust, gases (mainly Hydrogen and Helium), atoms, stars, interstellar clouds and planets to the center by force of gravity, but are not sure whether all galaxies contain a black hole in the center. Galaxies keep moving in relative motion to one another and intermittently can come so close that the force of gravitational attraction between the galaxies may become strong enough to cause a change in the shape of the galaxies, while in exceptional cases, the galaxies may collide. If two galaxies collide, they may pass right through without any effect or may merge, forming strands of stars, extending beyond 100,000 light years in space (World Book Online Reference Centre, 2005). Hence, neighboring and often other colliding galaxies induce the sha...