Astro-Image(s) of the Day: The Milky Way

[mckitterick]

Wow, a couple of gorgeous shots from the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day. After that are a couple more shots from NASA. Yesterday's, taken from atop Mauna Kea on Hawaii, high above most of the Earth's atmosphere:

Click the image to see the story.

And from last September, a mosaic taken in Canyonlands National Park, eastern Utah:

Click the image to see the story.

The Milky Way is the most-visible portion of our Milky Way Galaxy, recently identified as a barred-spiral type (see photo, below). We live within a small, partial arm called the Orion Arm, between the Sagittarius and Perseus Arms. This is about 2/3 of the way out from the core, so what we call "the Milky Way" is the disk of the galaxy; when we look inward toward the densest region, near the constellation Sagittarius, we're looking toward the galactic core. In the opposite direction of the core lies the outer Perseus Arm, while above and below the band of the Milky Way is the relative emptiness of intergalactic space. This next photo is a great map of the Milky Way Galaxy looking down from above, annotated with names of the spiral arms:

Click the image to see details about the spiral arms in our galaxy and to find a much-larger version of the image.

The Milky Way Galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across, 1,000 light-years thick, and contains between 200-400 billion stars. It takes our Solar System 220 million years to orbit the core. Wow, think about those numbers for a moment, then check out this great panorama of our view of this awesome domain:

Click the image to see a much-bigger version.

When I was young, I used to live in places where I could look up and see such glory. After looking at these photos, I need a vacation to a dark place.

Best,
Chris

Comments

[stonetable.livejournal.com]

Just once, I'd like to travel to one of these places and see the night sky as it's meant to be seen.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Oh, my gosh! How BEAUTIFUL!

[will-couvillier.livejournal.com]

Dunno about you, but for me that Utah photo sure does look like the core of a SF story...

[cmt2779.livejournal.com]

That first picture is so breathtaking. I really think that if everyone could see that every night, actually see some of what surrounds us, it would change the way we as a species viewed ourselves and the way we behaved. How can you look at that and not be awestruck?

[ericreynolds.livejournal.com]

Wow!

Last summer my kids and I camped out in NW New Mexico at Chaco Canyon. No cities within 100 miles, and the Milky Way just glowed.

That map of the Galaxy is cool. And I thought it was fascinating a few years ago when evidence came out indicating we live in a barred-spiral.

[chernobylred.livejournal.com]

Well, Utah is probably cheaper than Hawaii, but...

[theoneinblue.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting such lovely and awe-inspiring photos! And I hear you when you miss your dark places...growing up on a Kansas farm definitely had that perk, and I miss it.

[amjhawk.livejournal.com]

Dark, open sky vacations are awesome. For spring break of my freshman year, I went with a friend of mine from Lubbock down to his parents' "get away" house outside Uvalde, TX, in the Rio Frio river valley. (I think there were 7 other homes in the valley).

Even under the new moon, we were able to walk by starlight... and during the day, the river lived up to its name when we went swimming.

P.S. I have life news coming today, and I'd be more able to plan this sort of trip if we wanted to have like, a group camping vacation or something. That'd be awesome.

[siro-gravity.livejournal.com]

woooooooooooooooooow!!!! was i supposed to READ something?? these are so gorgeous! at first i thought the top pictures were paintings! i enlarged the image on the bottom...what is that chunk of rock in the foreground that looks like it scooted itself into the frame by itself?