I'll write the Enceladus story or something even cooler later in the week, but tonight I thought I'd post a nice picture from NASA. Tonight's image was taken from the Swift satellite. They made it by combining 39 frames together over 11 hours of exposure time. This is the nearby “Triangulum Galaxy” and is in the ultraviolet light range (the galaxy is purple only if we could see in ultraviolet). It’s about 2.9 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Triangulum.Go here for a better image:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/214434main_M33_UVOT.jpg
And for more of the story:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/m33.html
2 comments:
I don't know, I was wondering about the shape, if it was because of time lapse. I guess not, that it's the spiral nature of the galaxy. This is like the electron picture too, multiple frames. Good luck with your blog, and I'll do erotic photography and deer hunting: one shot.
If you mean why the galaxy is a spiral, it's just because that is the nature of the galaxy. This galaxy is very similar to our own, but 1/10 the size. The 11 hours was not long enough for it to move perceptively and so the time lapse did not contribute to the shape. :) The more frames, the better the picture. I was hoping it would look better in the blog, but it's all pixelated. The link has a much better resolution, and was what impressed me.
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