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Unusual Orbits in the Andromeda Galaxy Post-16
Unusual orbits in the Andromeda galaxy Post-16 Topics covered: spectra, Doppler effect, Newton’s law of gravitation, galaxy rotation curves, arc lengths, cosmological units, dark matter Teacher’s Notes In this activity students will use real scientific data to plot the rotation curve of M31 (Andromeda), our neighbouring spiral galaxy. They will use Kepler’s third law to predict the motion of stars around the centre of M31. They will then measure the wavelengths of hydrogen emission spectra taken at a range of radii. The Doppler equation will be used to determine whether these spectra come from the approaching or receding limb of the galaxy and the velocity of rotation at that point. They will plot a velocity vs radius graph and compare it with their predicted result. A flat rotation curve indicates the presence of dark matter within Andromeda. Equipment: calculator, ruler, graph paper (if needed) Questions to ask the class before the activity: What is the Universe composed of? Answer: energy, luminous matter, dark matter, dark energy. What is a spectrum and how so we get spectral lines? Answer: a ‘fingerprint’ of an object made of light. The spectrum of visible light is composed of the colours of the rainbow. Absorption lines arise from electrons absorbing photons of light and jumping an energy level or levels; emission lines occur when electrons fall down to a lower energy level and emit a photon in the process. What can a spectrum tell us? Answer: the composition of an object such as a star, its temperature, its pressure, the abundance of elements in the star, its motion (velocity). -
We Had a Great Time on the Trip. We Had Some Representatives from the Vandenberg and Santa Barbara Clubs Along with Us for the Trip
We had a great time on the trip. We had some representatives from the Vandenberg and Santa Barbara clubs along with us for the trip. The most notable thing on the trip up was a stop in La Canada Flintridge to refuel the bus and get a bite to eat. I pulled out my PST Coronado and did a little impromptu public Sun Gazing. The Sun was pretty active with a number of platform prominences as well as the ever-present flame types. A distinct sunspot group in a very disturbed area of the Sun with a bright spot had me wondering if there was a flare in progress (There wasn’t.) The patrons at the tables outside didn’t seem to object to seeing the Sun either. I had a little bit of a scare when we first got up to the gate as a couple of people who were going to meet us there were nowhere to be seen. Fortunately one of them was already on the grounds and the other showed up while we were in the Museum. Relief! As it turned out we all went on the tour of the grounds. Our tour guide Greg gave us a tour starting outside the 60” Dome. He talked about the various Solar Telescopes -the old Snow telescope which was always a non-performer because of the design of the building- too many air currents. He talked about the rivalry over the 60 and 150 ft tower solar instruments (looks like UCLA won this one over USC.) And we got a good look at the 150 ft tower. -
Messier Objects
Messier Objects From the Stocker Astroscience Center at Florida International University Miami Florida The Messier Project Main contributors: • Daniel Puentes • Steven Revesz • Bobby Martinez Charles Messier • Gabriel Salazar • Riya Gandhi • Dr. James Webb – Director, Stocker Astroscience center • All images reduced and combined using MIRA image processing software. (Mirametrics) What are Messier Objects? • Messier objects are a list of astronomical sources compiled by Charles Messier, an 18th and early 19th century astronomer. He created a list of distracting objects to avoid while comet hunting. This list now contains over 110 objects, many of which are the most famous astronomical bodies known. The list contains planetary nebula, star clusters, and other galaxies. - Bobby Martinez The Telescope The telescope used to take these images is an Astronomical Consultants and Equipment (ACE) 24- inch (0.61-meter) Ritchey-Chretien reflecting telescope. It has a focal ratio of F6.2 and is supported on a structure independent of the building that houses it. It is equipped with a Finger Lakes 1kx1k CCD camera cooled to -30o C at the Cassegrain focus. It is equipped with dual filter wheels, the first containing UBVRI scientific filters and the second RGBL color filters. Messier 1 Found 6,500 light years away in the constellation of Taurus, the Crab Nebula (known as M1) is a supernova remnant. The original supernova that formed the crab nebula was observed by Chinese, Japanese and Arab astronomers in 1054 AD as an incredibly bright “Guest star” which was visible for over twenty-two months. The supernova that produced the Crab Nebula is thought to have been an evolved star roughly ten times more massive than the Sun. -
The Most Massive Star Cluster in the Local Group
This is a repository copy of A 'super' star cluster grown old: the most massive star cluster in the Local Group. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/144713/ Version: Published Version Article: Ma, J., De Grijs, R., Yang, Y. et al. (5 more authors) (2006) A 'super' star cluster grown old: the most massive star cluster in the Local Group. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , 368 (3). pp. 1443-1450. ISSN 0035-8711 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2006.10231.x This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2006 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 368, 1443–1450 (2006) doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2006.10231.x A ‘super’ star cluster grown old: the most massive star cluster in the Local Group J. -
Facilitator Information – Galaxies
Facilitator Information (All you need to know about galaxies to survive the day) What is a galaxy? Galaxies are large collections of stars and gas and dust. They have millions to billions of stars, all held into a cluster by gravitational attraction. Most galaxies are flat, but there are different shapes — some are spirals, some are elliptical, and some are irregular. Our Galaxy The Milky Way is a galaxy, a slowly rotating cluster of more than 200,000,000,000 stars! Our Milky Way Galaxy looks a little like a pinwheel. It is a spiral galaxy, about 100,000 light years across. Spiral galaxies have: a bulge in the center (called the nuclear bulge) that contains the nucleus; a wide, flat disk with distinct spiral arms containing stars; and a surrounding halo of stars. There are several “spiral arms” in our Milky Way: Sagittarius, Cygnus, Perseus, and Orion. Where are we in the Milky Way Galaxy? We are in one of the spiral arms, about 30,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy — or about two-thirds of the way from the center. Can you see the Milky Way? Yes! On a very dark night, away from bright lights, you can see a faint, hazy — or milky — band in the sky. This is the Milky Way. The hazy appearance is because there so many stars that are very distant; your eye cannot distinguish the stars as separate points of light. By using binoculars or a telescope, you can see the individual stars. The Milky Way is like a big, flat disk in space. -
The Ellipticities of Globular Clusters in the Andromeda Galaxy
ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS MAY I 1996, PAGE 447 SUPPLEMENT SERIES Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 116, 447-461 (1996) The ellipticities of globular clusters in the Andromeda galaxy A. Staneva1, N. Spassova2 and V. Golev1 1 Department of Astronomy, Faculty of Physics, St. Kliment Okhridski University of Sofia, 5 James Bourchier street, BG-1126 Sofia, Bulgaria 2 Institute of Astronomy, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 72 Tsarigradsko chauss´ee, BG-1784 Sofia, Bulgaria Received March 15; accepted October 4, 1995 Abstract. — The projected ellipticities and orientations of 173 globular clusters in the Andromeda galaxy have been determined by using isodensity contours and 2D Gaussian fitting techniques. A number of B plates taken with the 2 m Ritchey-Chretien-coud´e reflector of the Bulgarian National Astronomical Observatory were digitized and processed for each cluster. The derived ellipticities and orientations are presented in the form of a catalogue?. The projected ellipticities of M 31 GCs lie between 0.03 0.24 with mean valueε ¯=0.086 0.038. It may be concluded that the most globular clusters in the Andromeda galaxy÷ are quite spherical. The derived± orientations do not show a preference with respect to the center of M 31. Some correlations of the ellipticity with other clusters parameters are discussed. The ellipticities determined in this work are compared with those in other Local Group galaxies. Key words: globular clusters: general — galaxies: individual: M 31 — galaxies: star clusters — catalogs 1. Introduction Bergh & Morbey (1984), and Kontizas et al. (1989), have shown that the globulars in LMC are markedly more ellip- Representing the oldest of all stellar populations, the glo- tical than those in our Galaxy. -
The Andromeda Galaxy's Most Important Merger
The Andromeda Galaxy’s most important merger ~ 2 Gyrs ago as M32’s likely progenitor Richard D’Souza* & Eric F. Bell Although the Andromeda Galaxy’s (M31) proximity offers a singular opportunity to understand how mergers affect galaxies1, uncertainty remains about M31’s most important mergers. Previous studies focused individually on the giant stellar stream2 or the impact of M32 on M31’s disk3,4, thereby suggesting many significant satellite interactions5. Yet, models of M31’s disk heating6 and the similarity between the stellar populations of different tidal substructures in M31’s outskirts7 both suggested a single large merger. M31’s outer low- surface brightness regions (its stellar halo) is built up from the tidal debris of satellites5 and provides decisive guidance about its important mergers8. Here we use cosmological models of galaxy formation9,10 to show that M31’s massive11 and metal-rich12 stellar halo, containing intermediate-age stars7, dramatically narrows the range of allowed interactions, requiring a 10 single dominant merger with a large galaxy (M*~2.5x10 M¤, the third largest member of the Local Group) ~2 Gyr ago. This single event explains many observations that were previously considered separately: its compact and metal-rich satellite M3213 is likely to be the stripped core of the disrupted galaxy, M31’s rotating inner stellar halo14 contains most of the merger debris, and the giant stellar stream15 is likely to have been thrown out during the merger. This interaction may explain M31’s global burst of star formation ~2 Gyr ago16 in which ~1/5 of its stars were formed. -
Drilling Through the M31 Halo Near Mayall-II/G1
Drilling through the M31 Halo near Mayall-II/G1 Michael Gregg University of California, Davis Michael West Lowell Observatory Brian Lemaux University of California, Davis Andreas Küpper Quantco, Inc. Origin of the brightest Globulars Clusters Mayall-II/G1 in M31 Omega Cen in Milky Way •G1 has mass of ~107 M⊙ and σ = 25 km/s •High ellipticity, ~0.2, 50% rotationally supported •Metallicity spread, ~0.45 dex •Evidence for massive blackhole in the core, ~104 M⊙ •=> Former dwarf galaxy nucleus, now Ultra-Compact Dwarf? Origin of the brightest Globulars Clusters ...and connection to galaxy halo formation… HST image of nucleated Typical UCD (or bright globular) dwarf elliptical in in the same galaxy cluster: the Fornax galaxy cluster: possibly a tidally stripped nucleus nucleus + envelope of stars Origin of the brightest Globulars Clusters... Fornax Galaxy Cluster ...and connection to galaxy halo formation… image credit: M. Hilker •Evolved tidal streams are too faint (∼> 30 mag/sq.′′) to detect with standard imaging (Ibata et al. 2001; Ferguson et al. 2002; etc., etc., etc.) •Need resolved star spectroscopy to identify tidal debris; characteristics can perhaps can yield insight into the precursor of G1… G1 in Context Chemin et al. (2009) • We view G1 projected against the outer disk of M31, 2.6˚ (34 kpc) distant from the bulge. • The M31 disk has v < −500 km s-1 at G1 (Chemin et al. 2009). • G1 systemic v = −332 ± 3 km s-1 (Galleti et al. 2006), separation of ∼ 170 km s-1, 5-6 times the velocity dispersion of G1 or the M31 cold disk. -
Stars and Galaxies
Stars and Galaxies STUDENT PAGE Se e i n g i n to t h e Pa S t A galaxy is a gravitationally bound system of stars, gas, and dust. Gal- We can’t travel into the past, but we axies range in diameter from a few thousand to a few hundred thou- can get a glimpse of it. Every sand light-years. Each galaxy contains billions (10 9) or trillions (1012) time we look at the Moon, for of stars. In this activity, you will apply concepts of scale to grasp the example, we see it as it was a distances between stars and galaxies. You will use this understanding little more than a second ago. to elaborate on the question, Do galaxies collide? That’s because sunlight reflected from the Moon’s surface takes a little more EX P LORE than a second to reach Earth. We see On a clear, dark night, you can see hundreds of bright stars. The next table the Sun as it looked about eight minutes shows some of the brightest stars with their diameters and distances from ago, and the other stars as they were a the Sun. Use a calculator to determine the scaled distance to each star few years to a few centuries ago. (how many times you could fit the star between itself and the Sun). Hint: And then there’s M31, the Androm- you first need to convert light-years and solar diameters into meters. One eda galaxy — the most distant object light-year equals 9.46 x 1015 meters, and the Sun’s diameter is 1.4 x 109 that’s readily visible to human eyes. -
Extragalactic Astronomy: the U Nivcre Bey Nd Our Galaxy
U1IJT RESUPE EU 1J3 199 021 775 dacon Eenneth Char TITLE Extragalactic Astronomy: The U nivcre Bey nd Our Galaxy. American Astronomical Society, Princeton, N.J. SFONS AGENCY National Aeronautics and Space Administra ashingtonl D.C.; National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C. REPOBT NO NASA-i:T-129 PUB DATE Sep 76 NOTE 44p.; FOF ltEd aocunents, _e SE 021 773-776 AVAII,AULE Superintendent of Documents, U.S. G-vernment Prin ing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402(5 ock Number 033-000-00657-8, $1.30) E.-RS PE10E 1F-$0.03 HC-$2.06 Plus Postige. DESCilIPTORS *Astronomy; Curriculum; *Instructional Materials; Science Education; *Scientific iesearch; Secondary Education; *Secondary School Science; *Space Sciences TIF NASA; National Aeronautics and Space Administration BSTRACT This booklet is part of an American Astronomical Society curriculum project designed to provide teaching materials to teachers or secondary school chemistry, physics, and earth science. The material is presented in three parts: one section provides the fundamental content of extragalactic astronomy, another section discusses modern discoveries in detail, and the last section summarizes the earlier discussions within the structure of the Big Bang Theory of Evolution. Each of the three sections is followed by student exercises and activities, laboratory projects, and questions and answers. The glossary contains unfamiliar terms used in the text and a collection of teacher aids such as literature references and audiovisual materials. (111) ***** *** * ** ** ***************** ********** Document., acquired by IC include many informal unpublished aterials not available from other sources. ERIC makes every effort * * to obtain the best copy available. Nevertheless, items of marginal * * reproducibility are often encountered and tbis affects the quality * * of the microfiche and hardcopy reproductions ERIC makes available * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). -
Mayall II= G1 in M31: Giant Globular Cluster Or Core of a Dwarf Elliptical
Mayall II ≡ G1 in M31: Giant Globular Cluster or Core of a Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy? 1,2 G. Meylan3 Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, U.S.A., email: [email protected], and European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-85748 Garching bei M¨unchen, Germany. A. Sarajedini University of Florida, Astronomy Department, Gainesville, FL 32611-2055, U.S.A. email: [email protected]fl.edu P. Jablonka DAEC-URA 8631, Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, Place Jules Janssen, F-92195 Meudon, France. email: [email protected] S. G. Djorgovski Palomar Observatory, MS 105–24, Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125, U.S.A. email: [email protected] T. Bridges Anglo-Australian Observatory, PO Box 296, Epping, NSW 2121, Australia. email: [email protected] R. M. Rich UCLA, Physics & Astronomy Department, Math-Sciences 8979, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1562, U.S.A. email: [email protected] 1 Based in part on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associate with proposal IDs 5907 and 5464. arXiv:astro-ph/0105013v1 1 May 2001 2 Based in part on observations obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated jointly by the California Institute of Technology and the University of California. 3 Affiliated with the Astrophysics Division of the European Space Agency, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands. ABSTRACT Mayall II ≡ G1 is one of the brightest globular clusters belonging to M31, the Andromeda galaxy. -
Stars and Their Purpose
Stars & Their Purpose.indd 3 8/17/06 8:19:54 AM First Master Books printing: August 2006 Copyright © 2006 by Werner Gitt. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations in articles and reviews. For information write: Master Books, P.O. Box 726, Green Forest, AR 72638. ISBN-13: 978-0-89051-482-5 ISBN-10: 0-89051-482-8 Library of Congress Number: 2006929548 Cover by Bryan Miller Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture is from the New International Version of the Bible. References to apocryphal books have been taken from The Jerusalem Bible (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966 edition). Printed in the United States of America. Please visit our website for other great titles: www.masterbooks.net. For information regarding author interviews, please contact the publicity department at (870) 528-5288. Stars & Their Purpose.indd 4 8/17/06 8:19:54 AM INDEX Preface............................................................................. 7 Preface to the English Edition ....................................... 13 Introduction.................................................................. 15 1. Can the Stars Be Counted?............................................ 17 2. In What Respects Do the Stars Differ?........................... 27 3. How Big Is the Universe? .............................................. 39 4. Four Characteristics of Space......................................... 43 5. Why Were the Stars Created? ........................................ 49 5.1 The Stars Were Made to Shine on Earth................. 50 5.2 The Stars Were Made to Determine Times and Seasons ................................................. 53 6. How Do the Stars Transmit Their Messages? ................. 57 6.1 Their Messages Are Silent....................................... 57 6.2 God’s Message Can Be Understood by Anybody ...