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posted by Fnord666 on Friday July 19 2019, @11:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-thought-astronomers-spotted-things dept.

Galaxies come in many shapes and sizes. One of the key galaxy types we see in the universe is the spiral galaxy, as demonstrated in an especially beautiful way by the subject of this Hubble Space Telescope image, NGC 2985. NGC 2985 lies over 70 million light-years from the solar system in the constellation of Ursa Major (the Great Bear).

The intricate, near-perfect symmetry on display here reveals the incredible complexity of NGC 2985. Multiple tightly wound spiral arms widen as they whirl outward from the galaxy's bright core, slowly fading and dissipating until these majestic structures disappear into the emptiness of intergalactic space, bringing a beautiful end to their starry splendor.

[...] The image (1.7MB) can be found here.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by istartedi on Friday July 19 2019, @11:26PM (4 children)

    by istartedi (123) on Friday July 19 2019, @11:26PM (#869205) Journal

    Nice to see the Hubble still blowing us away after all these years. That galaxy... is it even proper to say it has arms? It's more like a sunflower made from clumps of stars.

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  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday July 19 2019, @11:36PM (2 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Friday July 19 2019, @11:36PM (#869209) Journal

    Less political spin in the Fine Summery!

    until these majestic structures disappear into the emptiness of intergalactic space, bringing a beautiful end to their starry splendor.

    Convocating with the sublime, are we? (/sarc)

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:38AM (1 child)

      by edIII (791) on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:38AM (#869261)

      No matter how you hard you may try, you cannot politicize the movements of the heavenly bodies over millions of years. Politics stop working once you hit geological scales of time.

      In other words, by the time that galaxy dissipates, there could've been tens of thousand of civilizations born, living, and dying. Their politics impotent and boring to any being who's mind spans cosmic time.

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      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday July 20 2019, @06:16AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday July 20 2019, @06:16AM (#869300) Journal

        Kinda my point. Put this particular one on my observation list. Wasn't that the line from Firefly? You cannot take the sky from me. Close to Bode's Galaxy.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:26AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:26AM (#869236) Journal

    Too bad we don't see a LUVOIR-class telescope going up every year. It's time to make Hubble obsolete*.

    WFIRST [wikipedia.org] is on shaky ground:

    The Wide-Field Instrument is a 288-megapixel multi-band near-infrared camera, providing a sharpness of images comparable to that achieved by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) over a 0.28 square degree field of view, 100 times larger than that of the HST.

    [...] In testimony before Congress in July 2018, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine proposed slowing down the development of WFIRST in order to accommodate a cost increase in the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which would result in decreased funding for WFIRST in 2020/2021. In the President's FY20 budget request, termination of WFIRST was proposed again, due to cost overruns and higher priority for JWST.

    *Actually, the demand for observation time can scale essentially infinitely, to the point where billions of galaxies are imaged and there are dedicated telescopes aimed at nearby stars, the planets, etc. 24/7 (as long as it is in the field of view). So Hubble could be used and repaired indefinitely unless we choose to stick it in a museum or it becomes easier to send up a dozen new Hubble-class telescopes instead of repairing it.

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