The Heavens - Nebulas, Quasars, Norther Lights, and other delights

Paco Dennis

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Location
Mid-Missouri
Eagle Nebula


nebula1.en.jpg
 

An international team of astronomers has discovered the second most distant quasar ever found. Named Pōniuā`ena and designated J100758.264+211529.207 (J1007+2115), the object is around 13.1 billion light-years away, and contains a huge black hole with the mass equivalent to about 1.5 billion Suns, about twice as massive as that in the most distant known quasar ULAS J134208.10+092838.61. The existence of such a massive black hole just 700 million years after the Big Bang significantly challenges models of the growth of the earliest supermassive black holes.

image_8583-Poniuaena.jpg
 

The North Star: Polaris​


  • Constellation: Ursa Minor
  • Star Type: F-Class Supergiant
  • Mass: 4.5 times the mass of the Sun
  • Luminosity: 2,500 times brighter than the Sun
  • Diameter: 70 million km (50 x the Sun)
  • Temperature: 5,700 Celcius
  • Distance From Earth: 430 light-years
  • Rotation Period: 119 days
  • Alternate Names: Polaris A, Alpha Ursae Minoris, Pole Star, North Star
the-north-star-768x874.jpg
 

The North Star: Polaris​


  • Constellation: Ursa Minor
  • Star Type: F-Class Supergiant
  • Mass: 4.5 times the mass of the Sun
  • Luminosity: 2,500 times brighter than the Sun
  • Diameter: 70 million km (50 x the Sun)
  • Temperature: 5,700 Celcius
  • Distance From Earth: 430 light-years
  • Rotation Period: 119 days
  • Alternate Names: Polaris A, Alpha Ursae Minoris, Pole Star, North Star
the-north-star-768x874.jpg
Do you know what amazes me, Paco?

Light years. It's just so hard to fathom how far away (distance wise) one light year is, need alone dozens or hundreds of light years.

One light-year is approx. 9 trillion km (6 trillion miles).
 
I love to journey in my mind far from Earth...even to the "edge" of our universe sometimes. I find doing this puts so much of the melodrama we humans make in perspective. How very small we are in the BIG picture. :)

Our home Galaxy, The Milky Way, 100,000 light years diameter!

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Note those colorful nebula images do not represent colors one would see with one's eyes but rather are the result of pseudo colors being assigned during image processing to different spectral elements.

Spent a recent week re-reading several chapters in this college introductory astronomy textbook I'd bought cheap a decade ago that was >$100 new and because it is a wee dated can be picked up used for less than $15, well recommended. 600 large pages full of photos and graphics including those from the Hubbel Space Telescope.

https://www.amazon.com/Voyages-Galaxies-Astronomy-AceAstronomy-Paperback/dp/B010EW8LGS/ref=sr_1_4
 
Note those colorful nebula images do not represent colors one would see with one's eyes but rather are the result of pseudo colors being assigned during image processing to different spectral elements.
Thanks — I did not know this.
 


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