Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Day #386 Spiral Arms

Astronomers have, according to a posting on NASA Science News, been cataloguing stars for more than 400 years. There are, as Dr. Tony Phillips put it, “dwarf stars, giant stars, dead stars, exploding stars, binary stars; by now, you might suppose that every kind of star in the Milky Way had been seen.”


Not so.

Someone found a star with Spiral Arms.

Cool, huh?

It’s only 400 light years away from earth. Speaking cosmically that's practically next door.

It stretches more than twice the diameter of the orbit of Pluto. That’s big. Really big.

And nobody ever noticed it before.

Don’t you wonder what else we don’t know, what else we’re not even aware of not knowing?

What is there about bees, trees, the ocean, the people around us that we've just never noticed? May we could look a bit closer...


BEEattitude for Day # 386:
       Blessed are those who study the stars, for their vistas shall be infinitely large.


3 comments:

AggiePete said...

What a great photo! Our family are big astronomy buffs; never miss a PBS special when it comes to planets, stars, etc. This is amazing.

Fran Stewart said...

You might truly enjoy the NASA SCience News updates then.

Go to http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/

and click on Email Updates on the left. Then just sign up to receive the articles. They're written by either Dr. Tony Phillips or by Dauna Coulter, a woman I've quoted on occasion in this blog.

AggiePete said...

Outstanding! Will do just that - thank you!